YMMV / Street Fighter V

See also:

• Awesome Music - Street Fighter
• Memetic Mutation - Street Fighter

Index:

Games

• Main Page
• Street Fighter
• Street Fighter II
• Street Fighter Alpha
• Street Fighter III
• Street Fighter EX
• Street Fighter IV
• Street Fighter 6

Other Media

• Street Fighter: The Movie
• Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie
• Street Fighter Alpha: The Animation
• Street Fighter Alpha: Generations
• Street Fighter II V
• Street Fighter IV: The Ties That Bind
• Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li
• Street Fighter: Assassin's Fist

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A

• Accidental Innuendo: One of Seth's first lines upon his resurrection and subsequent insane rampage is "I want all the fighters' skill inside me!" This is definitely meant to play into his preexisting obsession with absorbing his opponents' literal skills and power, but with the fact that he'd been resurrected as, for all intents and purposes, a woman, the line has been interpreted with a much more inappropriate yet amusing subtext.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: As The Mary Sue pointed out, after Hot Ryu became an internet phenomenon, Ryu's been interpreted as a supportive Manic Pixie Dream Guy sort of "Understanding Boyfriend" type of character.
• Aluminium Christmas Trees: At his initial release, Zeku's winquotes were all 3-5-3 traditional verse haiku. Later characters were outright given less traditional haiku and just poetic verse. While this would seem rather lazy to general audiences, this kind of experimentation is common with English haiku enthusiasts, and reflects how Zeku is trying to make his divergent Ninjutsu style more different and worldwide than his former Japanese tradition of Bushin-ryu.
• Awesome Ego:
  • Karin was a popular character ever since her first appearance in the manga Sakura Ganbaru!, with her popularity earning her a position in the roster as a Canon Immigrant in Alpha 3. Afterwards, her Noblewoman's Laugh became practically a meme unto itself and her snobbish attitude attracted tons of fans. She returned in SFV due to fan demand, and became even more popular when said game revealed that she evolved from a Rich Bitch, now showing much more maturity and signs of compassion while keeping the arrogance she's beloved for, even becoming a Breakout Character with real plot significance. Of course, her snobbishness and the Character Shilling she gets are turn-offs for her detractors.
  • On the villain side, we have Bison, Urien, Gill and Seth. While most of the cast has this to varying degrees, these four are the by far and away the standout examples. They each have planet-sized egos and love to show off their power, with their win quotes basically being summed up as "I'm awesome and you suck." But given how powerful all of them are, they have every right to be smug:
  Bison: (after defeating Urien) "The true ruler is I, Lord Bison! Not some nobody spouting nonsense!"
  Urien: (after defeating Bison) "I never fail. Do not compare a peasant like yourself to me!"
  Gill: (after defeating Urien) "I, Emperor Gill, will accomplish the grand schemes of our organization. My destiny cannot be altered..."
  Seth: (after defeating Gill) "My name is Seth. Your name is irrelevant. Bow down before me!"

B

• Base-Breaking Character:
  • As soon as Nash was revealed, three camps of opinion arose: The first believes that his new design is awful and that if Capcom wanted to bring Nash back then his old design was just fine, although this complaint has since been mitigated by the fact that Nash has an alternate costume that gives him his Alpha appearance back. The second camp believes that Nash should have been left a mysterious background character, and bringing him back ruins one of the story's hooks. The third is just happy to have Nash back in some form, and is more angry that Capcom disregarded him for so long.
  • F.A.N.G. Some consider him incredibly awesome with a unique, tricky, and fun to use poison-based moveset, others consider him too incredibly silly to be taken seriously. Some find his design interesting, others think it's too weird even by Street Fighter standards. Also, the idea that he is Sagat's replacement in Shadaloo; either you find him a worthy Dragon to Bison or think he's far too goofy to be believable as Bison's right-hand man and wonder why that role wasn't given to Vega instead. Then there's his Critical Art. Some find it cool and befitting his silly personality, others find it underwhelming.
  • Vega's return had him become a motion character instead of a charge character. ^note Street Fighter tends to have special moves performed with either quarter/half/full circle motions, or by holding a direction for a certain amount of time before moving in a different direction. Vega, up until Street Fighter V, used the latter denomination. Debates, rants, and arguments immediately erupted all over. One side believes this is a welcome change for the character, expressing that his charge-based gameplay was ill-suited to his design previously and note how well the change has worked for Nash. The other side believes this is a betrayal by Capcom, say the character isn't really Vega, and demand a return to his traditional roots since there's no reason to fix what wasn't broken.
  • R. Mika fell into this. Despite being one of the most requested Alpha characters to make a return to the series, there are a number of fans who hated the idea of seeing her again, mostly because her character design appeared to be too silly and sexualized for them. The fact that V somehow made her outfit even more Stripperiffic didn't help. Even after the game was released, while many love her play style and endearing attitude, others still grumble over the fact that R. Mika's around at all, and tend to place her at the forefront of the "increased sexualization" argument the game has. The problems with R. Mika only worsened as she ended up becoming a Low-Tier Letdown among the player base over time.
  • When Abigail was first revealed, his reception was mostly negative due to his unattractive design^note It didn't help that the trailer showing him off was either glitched or showing an old build, as Abigail was shown in a permanently beefed-up state that's normally only supposed to happen when he activates his V-Trigger, making his already disproportionate muscles look even more weird. and being surprisingly picked over other more popular Final Fight characters like Rolento or Mike Haggar. However, after his initially sour reveal, he's built up a solid fanbase, who find him funny and fun to play as. It helps that he's also very fun to watch at tournaments and gives Balrog a rough time. However, he became a High-Tier Scrappy after the Season 3 patch gave him some buffs that a lot of players didn't think he needed, quickly turning Abigail into one of the most feared characters in the game. The Season 3.5 patch undid some of the damage, though, putting Abigail back into being a divisive but still fairly popular character.
  • Falke is the most divisive character in Season 3. Some fans have criticized her for having a bland design, boring story, stiff animations and bad gameplay, while others believe that her gameplay is unique and like her relationship with Ed.
  • Kage. He certainly satisfies the fans who wanted Evil Ryu and/or Oni back, being essentially Evil Ryu under a different name with a few elements of Oni thrown in. However, a lot of fans hate Evil Ryu and Oni for being evil versions of characters already in the game, which are often seen as lazy or unnecessary additions to fighting games. There's also a lot of backlash to Kage, since he was the sole character announcement of Capcom Cup 2018, without even a hint at who the rest of the characters will be, not even through silhouettes. Compared to the previous year, which announced Sakura as well as the rest of the year's characters, just announcing Kage and nothing else is seen as a huge letdown. He became even more hated once he was actually released, as he was derided for being an utterly awful and useless character who couldn't do anything or win against anyone. Rescued from the Scrappy Heap eventually occurred in Season 5, as he received a retool and numerous buffs that most people will agree fixed all of his problems and finally allowed him to be the big, flashy rushdown machine that he was intended to be.
  • G. While he was initially beloved by the fanbase after a long string of poorly-received new characters, he has gradually become extremely polarizing in terms of where people see his viability. Depending on who you ask, he's either gimmicky trash who falls apart against anyone who knows what they're doing, or he is the new Cammy with an abusive design and gameplay style that is, simply put, broken and the embodiment of everything that has historically been wrong with the game.
  • Luke, for a variety of reasons. Before his reveal, some were hoping that the final DLC character of SFV would be a highly-requested classic character or a potential Guest Fighter, particularly from SNK as the day of the 2021 Summer Update just so happened to coincide with the 20th anniversary of Capcom vs. SNK 2: Mark of the Millennium.^note  In an amusing twist, he does share a seiyū with one of SNK's own poster boys, Kyo Kusanagi, in Tomoaki Maeno, who is the latter's voice actor as of KOF XIV. When Luke's design and gameplay were finally revealed, fans were split on the claims of him being "a glimpse into the future of the franchise". Some like his gameplay while saying his design is a bit iffy but decent, while others don't like his design and say he's boring as a potential protagonist. Also doesn't help that initially many had assumed he was the same Luke from the cancelled Capcom Fighting All-Stars game but reimagined, only for Word of God to confirm they are two different characters.
• Best Level Ever:
  • Before the May 2016 update, "Hillside Plaza" (Laura's Stage) was the most popular. It's bright, colorful, has some eye candy in the background, and kind of looks like a realistic Brazilian favela (shanty) town. Except with the famous statue of Jesus replaced.
  • After the May 2016 update, "Air Force Base" (Guile's Stage) has taken over as the most selected and acclaimed stage by far. To start with, it's a Nostalgia Level reconstructed point-for-point from the original Air Force stage in Street Fighter II, and second, Guile's music plays throughout the background, making it a character theme that doubles as a stage theme in this game. Yes, that's right; Guile's theme actually goes with EVERYTHING in this game.
  • EVO 2016 saw the reveal and release of the "Ring of Destiny" stage. While it is controversially expensive, it's hard not to admit that it's extremely cool. A simple wrestling ring with the Capcom and Capcom Pro Tour logos on it in the middle of a gigantic stadium is just the start. It's filled to the brim with spectacle, like the fireworks that go off when the fight begins, the huge statues in the background towering over everyone, the spotlights waving around everywhere, and thousands of people watching and cheering. What's also cool is that the characters crowded around closest to the ring are background characters from the levels that launched with the game, dancing around excitedly. The stage has a lot of energy to it, and the music is the main menu theme, remixed to give the fight a sense of underlying intensity, making it really feel like the climactic finale of a huge tournament. To add to that, during EVO 2016, the arena's background graphics was changed to reflect that tournament (as it will for presumably every upcoming major event), and every fight of Top 8 was mandated to play on that stage (though a segment of fans felt that some of the stage's novelty wore off because it served as the backdrop for the entirety of Top 8 as opposed to being unveiled only for Grand Finals).
  • The "High Roller Casino" (Balrog's Stage) bears mention for being a snazzy update of Balrog's original Las Vegas stage from SFII, complete with a retro club mix of his CPS-2 theme that is widely seen as superior to Rog's actual character theme. Several fans wonder why this stage wasn't used more often during EVO 2016 (Top 8 in particular due to the above mandate for the Ring of Destiny), considering that the tournament was held at the Mandalay Bay resort in Vegas.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • Necalli contributes nothing to the story. The majority of the other characters have taken on the task to defeat Shadaloo for various reasons or are actually a member of said organization. What about Necalli? As stated by Dhalsim, he is an ancient being who'll appear when many warriors are needed, because the world is in a great crisis. Necalli's ultimate goal, to absorb the souls of Ryu, Dhalsim and Bison, fails miserably. Once he realizes he can't defeat Ryu later on, he makes his exit from the remainder of the story. Even his initial appearance against Nash is never explained.
  • Kage contributes nothing in the overall story. His entire story mode plays out like something of a Fever Dream Episode where he appears while Ryu is meditating and fights both Sagat and Akuma in what may not even be real fights that happened. And ultimately he's defeated by Ryu simply choosing to not care about him anymore, thus mastering the Power of Nothingness. Though it could be argued that this was necessary to show Ryu finally conquering the Satsui no Hado, it is still very strange to introduce a character only to immediately get rid of them in their own story mode.

• Bragging Rights Option:
  • Menat is one of the most difficult characters to use in the game due to her Orb and V-Trigger, which require an exceptional amount of control and setup but allow for an almost endless variety of combos. She's one of the rarest characters to see online, but she's considered a blast to watch as she's almost entirely dependent on the player's imagination and execution, and no two Menat players play alike.
  • Eleven is bragging rights to the max due to its gimmick that it picks from ''any'' character on the roster to transform into, at random, each match. Not only is the character random, but so is the V-Trigger/Skill, meaning that even if you somehow get a character you're familiar with, you'll potentially be stuck with unfamiliar/sup-optimal abilities. Using Eleven demands base knowledge of all the fighters' playstyles, from BnB combos to matchup-specific counters to optimal V-Skill/Trigger usage, which is insanely infeasible to anyone but the most dedicated players. While unfortunately not tournament legal, a skilled Eleven in ranked matches is, nonetheless, a very impressive feat that few could ever be mad at, as it is unmistakable proof that they have strong fundamentals and strong base knowledge to trounce anyone on their mains.
• Broken Base:
  • A debate has arisen regarding whether or not the game engine caters to, or against, Reversals. Reversals retain their ease of input from Street Fighter IV—a point of contention for many older players who are used to reversals being extremely difficult to time and thus rewarding pressure and offense. The easier inputs practically guarantee that any player can stop offensive pressure with a reversal attack such as a Shoryuken at any time. However, unlike in IV, a Reversal cannot be cancelled, meaning that if the pressuring opponent blocks it, they're guaranteed a high-damage punish. To some players, this makes for a satisfying high-risk/high-reward guessing game whereas a defending player can turn the tide instantly with a Death or Glory Attack. To others, this ruins the point of rushdown and frame traps, since a player that scores a knockdown or frame advantage has basically put themselves in a mix-up where they can be counter-hit for massive damage. And then there's the problem of wakeup 3-frame jabs, which break the "high-risk/high-reward" justification by being very little risk but, if hit-confirmed, can lead into massive reward for characters like Chun-Li. In summation, depending on whom you ask, Reversals are either too easy, too risky, both, or neither.
  • When Cammy was first revealed, some Japanese fans reacted negatively to her design, which had more realistic facial features than in prior games and was modeled after European features. After some harsh and vocal complaints,^note Such as complaining that she looked like she was meant to appeal to non-Japanese people and wondering if Japanese people were even making the game. the design was altered to be more Animesque, which was well-received in Japan but less so elsewhere in the world, where her initial appearance had been well-received.
  • Sexualization and censorship:
    • A number of fans have expressed concern over the increased sexualization of the already fairly fanservicey females, comparing it to the more shamelessly blatant Dead or Alive series. ^note Chun-Li's Houyoku Sen Critical Art features a brief Panty Shot, R. Mika somehow is wearing even less than she did in Alpha 3 and slaps her ass before her Critical Art, etc.; only Karin has escaped this so far, Premium Summer Costumes notwithstanding. Others don't mind it at all. This issue has come to a head with the introduction of Laura. Adding fuel to the fire is the beta build changes that tweak certain camera angles for Cammy and R. Mika. ^note The crotch shot during the former's intro was removed, while the latter slapping her butt during the beginning of her Critical Art happens off-screen. Some think the changes are perfectly reasonable, while others decry it as unnecessary censorship. Those in the middle don't really care about the issue. As an addendum to the above issue, there's also the matter of "Hot Ryu" and the media/marketing focus on his mind-boggling sexiness, which can open up another can of worms depending on who you talk to.
    • This censorship controversy was put into the spotlight again with Laura and Chun-Li's alternate costumes. Laura's outfits are so Stripperiffic that it makes R. Mika's butt-slap look positively tame by comparison, while Chun-Li once again dons the black dress without the pantyhose from IV. It caused a lot of fans to question why the hell R. Mika's butt-slap, which happens for a fraction of a second, was considered too lewd, while Laura's outfits, which looks lewd from every angle, and Chun-Li's dress, in which her Kick Chick arsenal can't avoid producing panty shots, were both left untouched.
    • In her early non-playable Story Mode appearances, Juri had a healthy dose of Navel-Deep Neckline. This was fixed when she became playable by having her wear a skin-tight body suit which covered her cleavage up. There are actually a good deal of players who think Juri looks better with the undersuit due to her biker-inspired design.
  • Street Fighter V had the unfortunate distinction of becoming the first major fighting game to embrace the Season Pass model of DLC distribution. ^explanationSeason passes sees the consume offered the ability to pay an upfront fee for a series of yet-to-be-released DLC, rather than wait for each DLC to be released individually.. The Seventh Generation of Console Video Games already opened the door to the idea of individual characters getting added after release as DLC, but season passes, in particular, were a touchy subject many saw as exploitative. This wasn't helped by the game launching with a paltry sixteen characters (the previous year, Mortal Kombat X released with twenty five) and an anemic list of features. On the other side, people saw this as a necessary evil and a reality to avoid Capcom Sequel Stagnation. The fact that the Season Passes eventually evolved to also include balance patches and new inclusions into the game eventually led to people softening up on this concept. It also helped that majority of the other big fighting games also adapted to this and this format of supporting and updating the games became the new norm industry-wide.

C

• Captain Obvious Reveal:
  • By the way his teaser was presented, you wouldn't be alone in thinking that Capcom had forgotten that they had already revealed that Nash was still alive.^note Granted, by means of a character relationship chart, though that had been making rounds since late 2009.
  • Helen secretly being Kolin. It's painfully obvious by her appearance, association with the Illuminati, and mysterious personality. In fact, many fans thought she was Kolin before Capcom officially confirmed it.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Once again, Ken is the most used and popular character by far.
• Complete Monster: F.A.N.G., the former Nguuhao cartel assassin, is a literally poisonous man who worships M. Bison so much that he concocted Operation C.H.A.I.N.S. to empower Bison and his Psycho Power through widespread fear and chaos, knowing very well the world would become a Hell on Earth. Doing everything in his power to ensure the operation succeeds, F.A.N.G. intercepts a treasonous programmer and melts her down to a puddle before sampling the remains. Not even young teenagers like Laura's brother Sean or actual children like Li-Fen are spared from his petty wrath, and the eccentric but sadistic F.A.N.G. takes special pleasure informing Rashid of the fate he inflicted to his friend.
• Contested Sequel: V easily attracted some of the biggest debate and controversy in the franchise, the nature of which changed a lot during its run. It got off to an infamously rocky start lacking in major content, featuring a disputed artstyle and simplification of mechanics that triggered plenty of backlash, though Capcom's continued work on expanding and tweaking the game regained plenty more positive reaction. However, even as the game now effectively sits complete, universal elements such as the simplified nature of its core gameplay (as well as its notoriously rough netcode) continue to leave it in a tough place where it's rarely called "bad", but also nowhere near as beloved as its predecessors.
• Critical Dissonance: Applies to the vanilla version. Arcade and Champion editions were received significantly warmer.
• Crossover Ship: Not so much an actual ship per se, but R. Mika and Pikachu Libre, a female Pikachu that wears a luchador costume and has a bit of a heart motif like Mika, from Pokkén Tournament have been paired frequently among fans of both series, to the point where "R. Pika" became a Fan Nickname for the wrestling electric mouse. There are even jokes that Libre was trained by R. Mika herself. ^note Which runs off of the joke that Pokken's incarnation of the normal Pikachu (yes, the game has two different Pikachu) was trained by the Mishima family from Tekken (specifically Heihachi) thanks to said Pikachu's mannerisms.

E-G

• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Laura earned a strong fanbase. Since that day, she's had more fan art than the other newcomers. When it was revealed that she's the elder sister of Street Fighter III veteran Sean, her popularity exploded. Being a Ms. Fanservice with an interesting design and a cool personality does help.
  • Rashid’s butler, Azam, has received some surprising popularity among fans for his cool design, with many hoping he'll be made playable in the future.
  • Necalli has seen more play than the other newcomers combined, with many veteran players enjoying his hard-hitting and honest style. He's also enjoyed popularity with fans of Akuma, who was not in the game at launch, as he shares many character traits with him.
  • Fans developed a love for Peter, the random police officer who tries to fight Cammy. It helps that he's named after and voiced in English by Peter "Combofiend" Rosas.
  • Menat, the fortune teller who briefly appears in Ed's Story Mode, had already garnered a small following for her design and possible connections to previous Street Fighter character Rose, so when she was announced as the fifth DLC fighter for Season 2, her popularity skyrocketed as she captivated many with her gorgeous visuals and unique fighting style. Also helping matters was that she came after Abigail, whose initial announcement was mostly negative, so fans were easily more willing to warm up to her.
  • Zeku, Guy's former master, was certainly an Unexpected Character when he was announced. Still, after his gameplay trailer came out, he amassed a following due to being the first Strider and Canon Welding with the Strider games.
  • "Blanka-chan", Blanka's Story costume, which turns him into an anthropomorphized version of the dolls he tries selling, became a huge fan-favorite overnight due to how goofy and/or cute it looks, and being used as a form of trolling/Cherry Tapping in online matches.
  • G's Large Ham personality, oddball design and possible connection to fellow fan-favorite Q made him a massive hit during his EVO 2018 reveal, some even believing that his reveal managed to steal the spotlight from the long-awaited return of Sagat.
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • Seems to be developing one with that of Mortal Kombat X and Killer Instinct due to both games getting new content within a month of the Street Fighter V launch and growing tournament scenes. This has developed to the point one can easily find comments on videos between the three franchises with Street Fighter fans dissing KI and MKX for being inferior to them, much to the latter franchises' intense chagrin.
  • As expected, the Capcom-SNK rivalry continues to this day, but The King of Fighters XIV may very well rekindle the old flames of The '90s, being another Sony-exclusive fighter that seems to take the "substance over style" route in direct opposition to SFV, boasting a far larger roster and more gameplay features right out the box at the expense of sheer graphical power.
• Fan Nickname:
  • It didn't take long after Charlie's reveal trailer for FrankenCharlie to catch on due to his stitched together appearance. Other names includes FrankenNash, Charliestein/Nashenstein, or if you're feeling a little bit punny, Monster Nash; all of these seem to have been acknowledged by Capcom actually giving him a Premium Halloween Costume based on Frankenstein's Monster (and possibly Victor). Given his story in this game, and as per Memetic Mutation due to his much darker nature, he is also referred to as Punished Nash.
  • Within minutes of Necalli's reveal, fans were already calling him a Pillar Man or Woolie. Among wrestling fans, he's also been called Finn Bálor. In addition, his Super Mode is referred to as Super Saiyan, because he looks like a non-blonde Super Saiyan.^note "Super Saiyan Sabretooth" was a minor spin-off from this, given Necalli's wild behavior and general appearance.
  • Rashid is often called Vegeta or Raditz because of his "scouter."
  • Ryu's pre-order alternate costume, the one where he's topless and has a beard, quickly gained the nickname "Hot Ryu" because... well, he's freaking hot (to the point where Even the Guys Want Him).
  • The game is referred to as Blonde Fighter V since a lot of the playable characters (Charlie, Cammy, Birdie, Ken, Vega, R. Mika, Karin, Alex, Guile, Kolin, Ed, Falke, Cody and G) are blonde. It's also being referred to as Street Fighter Alpha 4, or some variation, due to the large amount of characters returning from the Alpha series instead of III or IV. This was subsequently twisted into Street Fighter Beta, due to the title's incomplete state at launch.
  • Among the competitive community, it's referred to as Honest Fighter V due to the developers stating that the game would focus more on fundamentals and commitment than Street Fighter IV. In an ironic twist, Season 2 is sometimes referred to as UNGA Fighter V because of the gameplay design at that time being about little risk and high reward due to defensive options being weakened and offensive options, mixups in particular, becoming stronger, making the game feel more akin to an anime fighting game like Guilty Gear, the very series where the term "UNGA" originates from and that the game's battle director Woshige was a prominent player of.
  • Red Body for Zangief's V-Skill, being a much more defensive alternative to his Banishing Flat (a ki attack that protects Gief from projectiles when timed right, dubbed Green Hand because his hand glows green). Alternatively known as "Real Soviet Nanomachines."
  • Fans refer to F.A.N.G as Darkwing Duck due to his wide-brimmed hat, purple color scheme, and bird-like attacks. In a joyful example of complete sarcasm, they also refer to him as Friendly And Nice Guy.
  • Boobs McGee for R. Mika, coined by TotalBiscuit for obvious reasons.
  • Buzz Lightyear for the robot in the backdrop of the Lair of the Four Kings stage, also for obvious reasons.
  • In the competitive scene, there are a trio of Ken players within the California region: Chris Tatarian, Julio Fuentes, and Brentt "Brenttiscool" Franks who are dubbed "The Trinity" by players. When one member of the trio plays, the other two are next to the player for moral support and coaching. The Trinity's coaching practices have been the subject of a coaching ban at EVO 2016.
  • Laura is often called "Bonita," in reference to her story mode costume.
  • Cody has been dubbed "Codell Traverson" because of how debonair he looks as a Badass in a Nice Suit.
  • Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition quickly became known as Street Fighter V: Abigail Edition, due to various buffs turning Abigail into a High-Tier Scrappy.
  • Upon the reveal of Seth's new design, namely that he now has a female body, the name "Beth" was quickly coined.
  • "Luke Paul" for Luke, due to his primary costume appearance resembling that of Jake Paul.
• Fridge Brilliance: Ed's storyline and fighting style combines both M. Bisons, the boxer (international Balrog, Japanese Mike Bison) and the dictator (international M. Bison, Japanese Lord Vega)
  • Cammy having Fiona Belli's costume, from Haunting Ground, does make sense in hindsight when you consider that Fiona's only melee attack is kicking.
• Fountain of Memes: Since his playable debut, G has become the source of many memorable quotes and memes in both languages.
  • In English, he has a charismatic, suave tone that is maintained even when he's beating his opponents up, to the point where everything he says almost sounds like he's giving a speech. This culminates in memorable one-liners such as "This is true power!", "It's Super Tuesday!", and his infamous Critical Art quote, "Light it up."
  • In Japanese, his hammy Gratuitous English is the basis for many hilarious mishearings, the most notable ones involving the word "Earth", which, in Japanese, sounds like the word "arse". Thus, quotes such as "Power to the ARSE!" and "One ARSE!" have slowly been gaining traction.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • Though it didn't affect gameplay (and whether or not it was considered good or bad depended on personal preferences), a very unusual bug occurred during the beta and other early builds of the game that somehow caused the Jiggle Physics on the character selection screen to go nuts and get cranked up to eleven with any character selected for Player 2's side of the screen:
  • Of course, this was most noticeable with most of the female characters. Just compare Player 1◊ and Player 2.◊^note Note that Cammy is also affected in the presented gifs, though the effect is more subtle with her. Some fans liked this for obvious reasons, while others didn't because those jiggle physics were like something out of Dead or Alive and not Street Fighter.
  • The bug also affected hair (seen on Karin and Necalli), accessories (seen on Birdie's chain and Vega's necklace) and clothing (seen with Rashid's keffiyeh and Ryu's headband). And despite the hopes of some gamers, the Player 2 side is in fact the only side that was bugged. The March update fixed the Character Selection Screen bug for the most part; all of the women lost their absurd bounciness (essentially not bouncing even the slightest bit upon being selected after the update), and most of the other affected objects (hair, accessories, etc.) animate more fluidly/less frantically on the Player 2 side of the selection screen.
• Growing the Beard: The game as a whole took a long time to find its footing. While Capcom made clear its intentions on release that it was on a "live service" game that would be continuously updated with content and upgrades, it began in an infamously rocky state conspicuously lacking in a ton of features, including an impressive roster, single-player content, and stable online play, and with it already being sold at full price with additional DLC requiring more payment, the game was largely brushed away as an incomplete mess. However, with gradual releases of new characters, new and adventurous gameplay elements, story content, as well as accessible compilation releases with the Arcade and Championship editions, favor towards V has been increasingly restored, and nowadays it's seen as a solid fighter, or at the very least an actual worthwhile investment.

H-I

• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • F.A.N.G's winquote against Rashid becomes this when the Cinematic Story Mode reveals that he murdered Rashid's friend and ate her poisoned remains:
    F.A.N.G: "Want to know where your friend is? Try asking around in hell!"
  • "A Shadow Falls" has a small moment where Ken is bonding with his son, which becomes a bit harder to look back at come the prequel comic of Street Fighter 6, where Ken and Mel's relationship has become strained due to Ken's commitments as a fighter and CEO left him with little time to bond with his son.
• He Really Can Act:
  • Sakura's English voice actress Brittney Lee Harvey has improved considerably since the days of SFIV. For example, compare the way Sakura sounds in her Story Mode campaign to how she sounded back in Karin's campaign.
  • Those unfamiliar with Taliesin Jaffe's other works have praised his performance as Blanka in this game compared to IV and Street Fighter X Tekken.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: On the day that Sakura was released with Arcade Edition, the results of the first official Street Fighter Character Popularity Poll was released. Guess who came in 1st place?
• High-Tier Scrappy:
  • The initial reception of Abigail being added to the game was lukewarm at best, and hated at worst. Such reception remained intact when people discovered how he played. When he debuted in Season 2, Abigail hit like a truck and took forever to defeat due to having the highest health in the game, but it was balanced by the fact that he had very few defensive options. Many people expected him to either get nerfed or remain the same in Season 3. Instead, he received buffs that left players feeling like he came straight out of a nightmare.
  • In Season 2, Cammy suddenly gained an intense hatred from the majority of the player base. A hatred that would continue into the next season. Many characters, including Cammy, received nerfs to their defensive options. But that didn't matter, because Cammy's footsies and offensive pressure were bolstered to ridiculous levels, with many considering her to be even worse than Chun-Li was in Season 1. She dominated up close through the use of frame traps, tick throw setups, and the much-reviled throw loop. Then Season 3 made all of those attributes even more prominent, and by the mid-season patch you would think that she was a Creator's Pet. By the end of Season 3, you had upwards of 4 Cammy players in every Top 8. Cammy FINALLY got nerfed in Season 4, to much rejoicing. However, she remains a very good character in the right hands. In Season 4.5, Cammy remained mostly the same, with the exception of a new V-Skill.
  • Not long after the game's initial launch, it was quickly discovered just how good Chun-Li was. Boasting some of the best normals in the game and an Air Lightning Kick that with Some Dexterity Required allowed her to pressure the opponent into next week, it's no surprise she ended up taking so many majors. Many feared the second coming of her dreaded 3rd Strike incarnation, who was notable for being in a tier of her own above the rest of the cast.
  • When released, G stood out as one of the coolest and most unique characters in the game, with a powerup mechanic that makes him gain new and more powerful abilities as long as he keeps his "levels". He is also one of the most skill-intensive characters in the game, which means he is exceptionally flashy and effective in the right hands. However... none of that mattered after it became clear just how ridiculously good G was as a character. Following his release at the end of Season 3, players quickly grew tired of how capable G was of "robbery"^note Turning around a game he was about to lose and coming back with high-damage mixups and combos., causing complaints similar to those of R. Mika early in the game's life. The complaints only grew after G was buffed in Season 4, acquiring more health, more combo tools, as well as other improvements, but Season 5 finally saw the President of the World getting a much-needed nerf to his obnoxious V-Trigger I.
  • Season 1 R. Mika was feared and despised by a significant number of players due to her massive mix-up potential, heavy damage, scary corner vortex, and V-Trigger which brings in an Assist Character out of nowhere. She was frequently called "random" and "dumb" because she could easily put an opponent in the corner and use her momentum to curbstomp a match she was losing only moments ago. Some characters were considered to have superior tools to R. Mika, but she was still the most feared character by far. Learning how to deal with a low-to-mid-skill R. Mika player became a priority after Marn randomed his way into 4th Place at a major. Despite that, R. Mika players still get hate, and losing to her generates so much salt that pro advice basically amounts to "It's R. Mika. It happens." Adding to this, Fuudo made it all the way to Grand Finals at EVO 2016 using her, and NuckleDu won two back-to-back majors using a combination of both R. Mika and Guile. And then Capcom Cup 2016 happened. Not only did most players using R. Mika get really far, but NuckleDu won Capcom Cup with her. Mika was heavily nerfed in Season 2 in order to prevent her from putting opponents in endless mix-ups and guessing games.
  • In Season 1, Rashid started out as a solid character but not too high, not too low and gained a pretty good following in the fighting game community. Then Season 2 happened, and he received buffs that made him consistently placed in the high tiers — while the hatred against him was overshadowed by the likes of Balrog, Urien and Cammy, the nerf to invincible reversals definitely made him difficult to deal with. But it's Season 3 is where the hate really began, as not only did he get buffed even further with greater tools for pressure, but he also gained a much more powerful tool in the form of V Trigger 2. His prominence in both tournament and ladder led to some substantial nerfs in the Season 3.5 patch, but then Season 4 buffed him yet again into one of the most powerful characters. It's pretty telling that in Season 4 tournaments, Rashid along with M. Bison and Cammy are the most used characters. Rashid was buffed again in Season 4.5 with the addition of alternative options through his new V-Skill, but he remains mostly the same in terms of playstyle.
  • Street Fighter fans across the world were both shocked and intrigued when Seth returned looking very different. Gone was the Terminator-esque robot man they collectively hated from IV. Instead, Seth not only sported a brand-new female body, but also a brand-new moveset while still keeping his ability to use the moves of the other cast members. Unfortunately, the attraction to Seth's new gameplay and character design did not last. One of the reasons Seth was hated in IV was because his moveset was considered very cheap, granting him a wide variety of mobility options while also allowing him to bombard the opponent with damaging combos, setups, and wakeup pressure (okizeme).
    In V, Seth boasts some of the fastest walk speeds in the game (equal to or faster than even the likes of Young Zeku and Vega), some of the best normal attacks in the game which give him options for almost every situation, very good anti-air capabilities, high damage and stun output, and not one, but two very good and very powerful V-Triggers, making him one of the few who can freely make use of both as he pleases. His most devastating tool by far, however, is his new jumping Axe Kick special (that he borrows from Makoto), which acts as an instant jumping overhead, and leads to full combos. Seth is extremely difficult to defend against, and very terrifying if he managed to land a solid hit. Many consider Seth to be one of the best characters in the game, alongside the likes of Akuma, Urien, and G.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Jose Llera is regarded as a top-notch Ken player and one of the designers of the general blueprint that most Ken mains followed in the days of IV. Llera is better known by the handle of "BananaKen." Come V, many of the jokes at Ken's expense call to attention his hairstyle's peculiar resemblance to, well, bananas.
  • In the UDON comics, there was a moment in a match between R. Mika and Zangief where the latter accidentally touches the former's ass, resulting in her becoming flustered and turning the match around. In her reveal trailer for this game, R. Mika doesn't even seem to mind, going as far as to smack her own ass before doing her Peach Assault Critical Art.
  • In Summer 2015, Evil Geniuses player Kenneth "K-Brad" Bradley once made an entrance to the Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 tournament at CEO which parodied "Stone Cold" Steve Austin's entrance, Stone Cold Stunner, and beer-drinking celebration antics. Cue R. Mika's reveal trailer in SFV, where it's revealed that the Stone Cold Stunner is her V-Reversal, complete with the gut kick.
  • Despite the announcement of several returning veterans, Akuma was notably absent at launch. Where did he go off to (barring DLC)? Tekken 7. Looks like Tekken X Street Fighter is happening after all.
  • Notorious Trolling Creator Yoshinori Ono attempted to troll the fans by teasing that his favorite character Blanka would be appearing heading into the Brazil Game Show character reveal. Those plans were utterly disrupted when pictures of the game's actual electric Brazilian character, buxom diva Laura, were leaked. Then, days before the show, came the leak of the actual video trailer. So he didn't even get that. The only part of the bait-and-switch that Ono got to keep a surprise for showtime was the life-sized Laura statue at the event. Judging by Ono's reaction to this, he was particularly upset. Almost as if he himself had been successfully trolled.
  • Community Effort Orlando is a major fighting game tournament in Orlando themed around wrestling in which every match on their main streaming channel is inside a four-corner ring. In 2016, Capcom rolls out the Ring of Destiny, a stage in SFV stylized like a four-corner ring.
  • The Image Song "Survivor" becomes this when you realize Man With a Mission did the first opening for the anime Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans — which was replaced as the anime's opening with another band's song called "Survivor" just a month before both the game and the new MWAM album both songs are on came out.
  • In Himouto! Umaru-chan, the title character frequents a "Gapcom" arcade, one of whose employees◊ is a Lawyer-Friendly Cameo version of Ryu. Sakura's official story in Arcade Edition is that she now works part-time at a Capcom arcade. Clearly, she's copying her sensei in every way possible.
  • Cody, who's known to have blonde hair, was shown in the Arcade Edition roster reveal trailer/CGI intro to be wearing a suit. Five days later, another famous American Cody in Japanese media, one who's known to wear suits, turned up at a wrestling event rocking bleached-blonde hair. Bonus points: both reveals were made in America^*Capcom Cup in Anaheim, California; ROH Final Battle in Manhattan, New York.
  • And then in May 2018, Cody's full character trailer comes out, featuring a live action scene in which he is portrayed by pro wrestling's most famous Street Fighter fan, Kenny Omega. Not too unusual... except he's currently the other Cody's rival for leadership of the Bullet Club — whose shirt was featured as an alternate outfit for every playable character in Tekken 7.
  • In SFIV, Cody remarks to Seth that he should cut back on the "weirdness" the next time they fight. Both are present in the next installment, and Seth's "weirdness" is now dialed up to eleven.
  • In the Street Fighter movie, Charlie ended up experimented on and turned into Blanka which most fans found silly. In V though, while he doesn't turn into Blanka, he's still captured by enemy forces and experimented on, turning into a Frankenstein monster of sorts.
  • The 30th Anniversary Tarot Deck that Rose carries has an SF character representing each of the major 22 Arcana (e.g., Lovers for Elena, Justice for Chun-Li, etc). C. Viper is represented by the Temperance Arcana. Her (English) voice actress? Michelle Ruff! A.k.a., Sadayo Kawakami, another character who's represented by the same Arcana.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!:
  • A number of fans of IV are upset that Capcom made this to be more accessible for new players, complaining about the game being catered towards "Scrubs" and thus not as deep or fun as earlier installments. This, ironically enough, is in spite of the fact that IV, despite its difficulty in high-level play, was also designed to be a jumping-on point for newcomers as opposed to the mechanically deep Alpha 3 or 3rd Strike, earning it the same complaints from the SF fanbase that were established prior to IV. Everything's come full circle.
  • Some players are rather miffed with the game's approach with the fundamentals, stating the lack of certain features like unblockables. Conversely, a high-level complaint about the game is that it encourages too much rushdown play without enough poking or foot games to emphasize the need for strong defense.

L-M

• Les Yay: The ending of Cammy's Story Mode gives off some major Cammy/Juni vibes. Juni hugs Cammy from behind and tells her that being around her is the reason she's able to enjoy life, and Cammy responds by resting her hand on top of Juni's, tenderly thanking her, and promising to return once she's finished with her mission.
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • When Ed debuted in Season 2, he was considered a borderline mid-to-low tier character. He had some redeeming qualities like an excellent backdash, but lacked consistency in his combos due to odd pushback and frame data on his normals. He also had a very good V-Reversal which safely allowed him to escape pressure. Starting with Season 3, he was nerfed for seemingly no reason in the eyes of the competitive community, and ever since then it's been a continuous downward spiral. It's gotten to the point where as of Season 4 it's become a meme. At long last, however, Season 4.5 has finally given Ed significant buffs that help make him a viable pick.
  • Falke's debut in Season 3 was marked with utter disappointment from much of the community. Her normals were extremely lacking in range and versatility for someone who fights with a stick, and her damage output and combo consistency rivaled that of her own partner Ed. She was widely considered one of the absolute worst characters in Season 3. In Season 4, however, she received a massive rework that more or less completely changed how she played.
  • F.A.N.G is widely considered one of the worst characters in the game due to everything he does being lackluster in comparison to the rest of the cast. His zoning is subpar at best. His offense consists entirely of gimmicky, fake pressure with plenty of gaps that can be easily squeezed through and punished heavily. He deals practically no damage, and his poison is not terrifying at all since it also does very little damage over time.
    Everything he does can be very easily countered, while he himself struggles heavily against what the rest of the cast can do due to having no invincible reversal or any sort and unreliable defensive options. No amount of changes made to F.A.N.G have done anything significant to bring him out of low tier, not even his new V-Trigger or the new moves he received in the last few seasons. F.A.N.G is practically considered the new Dan of the game, and has gotten to the point where some would say he is not just considered the weakest character, but quite possibly The Scrappy in general for this game.
  • Juri was considered to be an absolute joke in this installment. With a needlessly convoluted overhaul that leaves her with terrible frame data, abysmal defensive options, and a middling offensive game that completely falls apart if she can't accrue some Fuhajin stores, Juri has three okay matchups (two of which are against characters that are almost never used), a bunch of bad ones, and a slew of unwinnable matchups against virtually all of the top tiers.
  • The reveal of Kage had many excited at the prospect of the long-awaited return of Evil Ryu; what they ended up getting was Evil Dan instead. Kage launched in an absolutely abysmal state and was widely considered to be one of the worst characters in the entire history of the game's seasons, on par with Falke when she first joined the roster. His main problems were his lack of combo routes (which in turn limited his damage potential) and his inability to effectively apply pressure. It took a whole year, but these issues were finally addressed in Season 4.5, along with others, and Kage was actually taken into early consideration for best Shotoclone in the game.
  • More and more professional players, such as Kenneth "K-Brad" Bradley, considered Laura to be the "worst character in the game" in Season 1 (even though K-Brad complained about losing to her all the time) and considered anyone who won with her to be lucky frauds. While her vortex game^note Ability to put players into high-risk, high-reward guessing games. isn't considered as dangerous as R. Mika, Laura does an insane amount of damage off one hit, and has some of the highest stun damage while in V-Trigger as well. That means you can out-play a Laura player the entire game and then get hit once and be one tap away from stun and one combo away from death. She was increasingly nerfed with every season and mid-season update, to the point that she has almost entirely vanished from any major's Top 16.
  • Ryu in Season 1 was considered to be in a good place, powerful but by no means broken or unfair. As of Season 2, the Street Fighter poster boy has had nothing short of an abysmal showing in the tournament scene, with terrible normals, his signature zoning game rendered nigh-useless and, despite being stated as the character the game is balanced around, he doesn’t fit the system mechanics at all, with a laughably weak V-Skill and two nigh-useless V-Triggers. As of a season later, players see no reason to use Ryu when Akuma offers a much more solid Shoto playstyle and Guile offers a significantly better zoning style. Even after 2-and-a-half seasons worth of quality of life buffs and new moves, it still wasn't enough to bring Ryu out of bottom tier... until Season 5.
  • Season 1 Zangief, while not outright terrible, was generally agreed to have some of the worst match-ups in the game, especially against Dhalsim and Birdie. The loss of his Banishing Flat special means that he has more trouble getting in on characters who use long-ranged attacks and projectiles, and his V-Skill isn't very useful. Season 3, however, is the point at which Zangief was finally considered to have entered "terrible" status, following a recovery nerf to his Knee Hammer—his main tool for closing distance on his opponents and avoiding low attacks. His light attacks were also nerfed, making it more difficult to tick throw or jab confirm into his various combos/setups. To top it all off, the universal nerf to command throws (increasing their recovery time) hurt the Red Cyclone more than most. It began changing with Season 4, due to the quality of life changes giving Zangief ways to cancel out of V-Skill and improved frame data and damage on some of his moves, with some of the former Zangief mains giving him another go. Season 4.5 buffed Zangief even further, leading to him being considered viable once again.
  • Fans had been clamoring for Guy to make his triumphant return, not just for his style but also for how technically demanding it was. Capcom released Zeku to a very positive reception, especially for fans of Capcom's legendary ninja Strider Hiryu. That reception quickly died down when it was discovered that Zeku was... bad. Really bad, to the point where he was considered worse than Ryu, dethroning the poster boy of SF as the weakest character in the game at the time. Even Zeku loyalists like Sanford Kelly and Wolfkrone declared that it was very unlikely he'd make an impact in the competitive scene. Adding on to that were the views that Zeku's Young form was considered the only truly viable mode for the character, with many saying that if Young Zeku had some of Old Zeku's tools, he could actually be a decent character. And so, Zeku wallowed in the depths of bottom tier long into Season 3...but then, a miracle happened.
• Memetic Loser:
  • In correlation with the meme regarding Ken under Memetic Mutation, many jokes have been made about how Street Fighter V is intent on ruining his life.
  • Juri has been pretty much mocked by the fandom due to her unnecessary rework that caused her to plummet down to low tier, rather dull music that sounds something like a rave party than her vicious Street Fighter IV theme, and other instances that turned her into this.
  • Necalli's role in "A Shadow Falls" (or lack thereof) has caused him to become one as well, with many seeing his only purpose is to be the jobber to show off how powerful M. Bison and Ryu have become.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • There have been many jokes about Necalli's V-Trigger being him going Super Saiyan. It helps, or doesn't help, that newcomer Rashid is wearing what distinctly appears to be a scouter.◊ Also, some of Necalli's alternate colors give him golden hair. Similarly, several people consider Necalli to be one of the Pillar Men, with specific comparisons made with Kars.
  • "Hot Ryu." The reveal of Ryu's GameStop pre-order costume raised the attention of all sorts of gamers, stupid sexy Hot Ryu. Storm Collectibles' action figure even uses the name "Hot Ryu" officially, making it a bit of Ascended Fanon.
  • This summarizes Rashid's theme song in one word: RASHIDOOOO! ^ExplanationRashid's theme features a chorus that phonetically pronounces his name as it would sound to a Japanese speaker. It is well on its way to becoming the new "Guile Theme Goes With Everything" or RULES OF NATURE!
  • Due to the game being unpolished at launch, there are jokes about the game being a new Street Fighter Alpha. Or alternately, Street Fighter Beta.
  • Ken's rather controversial redesign has been frequently written off as Ken going through a mid-life crisis. The reason for this is due to this game taking place before III, where Ken sports his usual "red gi, short haircut" look.
  • Crossing over with real life, the size of Chun-Li's legendary thunder thighs in this game were remarked as "unrealistic" by some circles, as was the case with IV. Then, a fitness competitor by the name of Natascha Encinosa posted a picture of herself in a black dress, making her the spitting image of Chun-Li in her alternate costume. There has been much buzz about this "real life Chun-Li," particularly on Encinosa's Twitter and Instagram accounts; so much so that she briefly used the dress image as her profile picture on both accounts. She also briefly changed the title name of her Twitter account to "Chun Li."
  • Karin's Noblewoman's Laugh (see here) is this among tournament Karin players, with crowds often echoing it in the background at the conclusion of her Critical Art especially if it finishes off the round. (Like so.) Even Karin cosplayers have got in on it.
  • "It's unreactable!" became a meme in regards to Birdie's EX Bull Revenger command throw. ^ExplanationIn this move, Birdie leaps forward and attempts to catch an opponent and slam them with his chains. The throw is relatively slow, often compared with Balrog's rush-based attacks, which were often interrupted or dodged easily in high-level play. In the early months of SFV, however, the novelty and strangeness of the attack meant no one was able to consistently react to that throw, causing players to call it "unreactable" jokingly.
  • "Devour Hour!" ^ExplanationNecalli has cannibalistic themes and tends to repeat syllables as Verbal Tic, at one point saying the word "Devour-our-our". Some commentators and fans have adopted the Narminess of this and created "Devour Hour," often used to describe a match where a Necalli player is trouncing an opponent.
  • "Please Understand" is a borrowed one, due to the issues with the server, the slow implementation of DLC characters (if a character is announced for a particular month, expect it to take until the very end of that month) and the Zenny system.
  • 8. ^note The 8-frame input delay that was discovered shortly after the game's release was blamed for tournament losses a few months later, leading to it (and the game itself) becoming the butt of jokes among competitive players.
  • Akuma Matata! ^note Akuma's new design in V depicts him with a full beard and longer hair, resembling the mane of a lion. Fans immediately took note of this and began photoshopping Akuma's head onto pictures from The Lion King, like so.
  • When talking about Ed, expect people to make references to Ed, Edd n Eddy and/or Eminem.
  • Y'all, we really need to talk about Menat.
  • "Is this a Strider reference?" came in full force after Zeku's gameplay trailer came out.
  • Power to the ass! ^note A common mishearing of G's Critical Art dialogue in Japanese.
  • Need a cup of CAWFEE? ^note Upon her reveal, fans immediately took note of Lucia's Joisey accent, with the aforementioned line being the most notable example.
  • Seth said "Trans rights!" ^note Seth from IV returns in a rather unusual form, inhabiting a female robotic body while still retaining his deep, masculine voice. The jury's still out on what gender, if any, he identifies with, but people started joking that Seth has become a transgender or non-binary character.
  • "Street Fighter V is balanced" ^note  Rather infamously, characters such as Cammy, Rashid and especially M. Bison kept getting buffs for no reason despite already being top tiers, which led to the competitive scene sarcastically calling out Capcom.
• Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales: Brazil was quick to embrace Laura, as she's basically every good stereotype the country has ever had (an Amazonian Beauty, Statuesque Stunner, Hot-Blooded Spicy Latina of mixed race, and an Innocent Fanservice Girl to boot).
• Mis-blamed: To an extent. The game not keeping to its promises regarding on-time content updates appears to be the result of miscommunication; the monthly schedule for DLC releases made available to the public by Capcom USA was never set by Capcom Japan, which has criticized its sister branch for the controversy regarding Ibuki's "delay" (Ibuki's release alongside the Story Mode update was meant to simply be an announcement in Capcom Japan's eyes).
• Moral Event Horizon: F.A.N.G. spends the entire Cinematic Story Mode gleefully hopping and skipping across this. His first on-screen act is to dissolve a scientist alive, toying with her beforehand to revel in her terror. He licks the remains afterward. Then, he threatens to murder Sean in such a manner, stopping only for the intervention of Ken and co. Not satisfied with these heinous acts, F.A.N.G. later on gloats to Rashid's face about murdering his friend, provoking the normally friendly Rashid to declare that he will kill F.A.N.G. He's still not done, however, attempting to MURDER A CHILD, stopped once again by Chun-Li.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • The announcer saying "Congratulations!" and victorious music when you complete a Survival run. It comes as a relief, especially after the harder ones.
  • The "PING" noise when you successfully parry an attack from your opponent, especially if that attack happens to be a Critical Art.
  • For many, Karin's Noblewoman's Laugh.

N-R

• Narm:
  • Some find Necalli's odd way of repeating syllables to be more cheesy than unnerving, feeling it undermines his otherwise menacing presentation.
  • Laura wearing her Bonita alternate outfit around her brother strikes some as nothing to write home about, if not unintentionally hilarious, particularly because she also spends her entire Story Mode fighting in it and absolutely no one bats an eye at her about it.
  • While most of the artwork for the Story Mode scenes are well-drawn, characters are occasionally drawn with oddly-proportioned/structured faces and physiques that can come across as more comical and/or jarring than intended.
  • The SFV development team spent a great amount of time making Necalli look like the next huge threat of Street Fighter, comparable to the likes of M. Bison, Akuma, and Gill. His Story Mode tells the prophecy of him consuming the souls of Ryu, Dhalsim, and Bison. This grand build-up lead to an embarrassing showing on Necalli's part in the main story, "A Shadow Falls," where he doesn't even have any bearing in the plot! He doesn't get to consume any of the three souls on his list and is little more than a side story nuisance.
  • Kage's horns, which are supposed to be reminiscent of oni, can instead end up looking a lot like cat-ears.
    • Speaking of Kage, once you turn your head and squint, his moves seem unusually similar to Dan of all people, from the leading arm Shoryuken, one-handed short ranged Hadouken, to the normals and even his Shun Goku Satsu can be compared to Dan's ultra combo (to be fair said move was intentionally made to look like a half-assed Shun Goku Stasu as a joke).
  • Seth's match intro sees his new body introduce itself as "Doll Unit Zero," only for Seth himself to butt in awkwardly laughing and asserting himself as Seth. The tone in which he says this makes it sound like he is massively insecure. Which, of course, he is.
    • There is also his round outro on 20% health, in which Seth suffers a literal mental breakdown and demands his writhing and beaten opponent to not call him "defective." The fact his voice cracks during his outburst makes it sound like he's almost on the verge of crying. So much for the badass character from Street Fighter IV.
  • In one scene in A Shadow Falls, Cammy pulls out a package containing one of the keys to the Black Moons. But due to Hammerspace being at play, not to mention where Cammy takes it out of, it ends up looking like she literally pulled the package out of her own ass.
• Narm Charm:
  • Lucia's (debatably fake) Nuyorican voice is almost aggressively stereotypical and over-the-top ("Y'need a cuppa CAWfee?"), but it makes her all the more endearing.
  • Seth gets stripped of a lot of his dignity in this game — he's put through a frankly embarrassing amount of trauma, mindlessly (and hammily) chasing down hallucinations of Bison to beat up while screaming both about how godlike he is and about how he's not a defective doll. Few fans will argue that it doesn't make him look pathetic as hell, but even fewer will argue that it doesn't make him a lot more entertaining.
  • Zangief breaking Satsuki's blade by flexing his muscles before proceeding to go full ham during the climax of A Shadow Falls is absolutely corny, but it is also badass in an over-the-top way.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Vega becomes a hell of a lot creepier here than in his previous appearances. This is evidenced by his numerous deranged facial expressions◊ as he attacks, laughing like a madman as he lands his Bloody Kiss and Bloody Rain Critical Arts, and overall coming off as more sadistic and twisted than before, especially if his interactions with Cammy and Chun-Li are anything to go by. He even expresses a desire to bathe in Chun-Li's blood to maintain his youth. You know it's bad when Juri calls him a creepy pervert. His win quote against Karin also contains some creepy undertones:
  Vega: Your integrity is a fresh flavor for me to relish!
  • Necalli employs a graceless, savage fighting style that can leave players wincing at its brutality, and is just an all around ominous guy with a seriously dark and intimidating aura around him. Not to mention how mysterious he is. And then there's his Story prologue, which all but confirms that he isn't human. What's worse is that Word of God states he was originally supposed to eat his defeated opponents. This was decidedly too mature, and was toned down. With him only eating their souls instead.
  • In the Cinematic Story Mode, F.A.N.G's first appearance has him using his poison to dissolve a scientist alive. The fact that he scoops up some of the scientist's remains and licks it doesn't help. Add to the fact that we find out said researcher was Rashid's friend that he spent the entire story trying to save. It was already hard to watch the scene before, watching the scene again with that knowledge is horrifying. Especially when you consider that Rashid could've arrived in time if he hadn't stopped to pull a rescue that he didn't need to (not that he or the player knew at the time).
• Older Than They Think:
  • Capcom toyed with the idea of having a character use poison attacks in 3rd Strike, but the idea fell through, and Remy ended up being added instead. This idea was picked up again for V, and F.A.N.G was introduced as Street Fighter's first poison user.
  • Guile's Faultless Move, which allows him to hold a charge while crouch walking forward, is heralded by many players as a bold new development (and it is admittedly a big deal for Guile), but Kim Kaphwan's had the ability since his debut in Fatal Fury 2, roughly 23 years earlier.
  • The reveal that Akuma's Shun Goku Satsu is actually a flurry of hits obscured in complete darkness, which lights up with each hit, is a concept that has existed before. In Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix, despite the silly animations, the move has a striking resemblence to how it looks in this game.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • Birdie's reintroduction to the series was pretty unexpected, considering that in the official Capcom popularity poll, he came extremely low on the list, being only six spots away from being dead last. Though this might not be out of hatred for the character, but rather him leaving no impression on people back in the Alpha series. Birdie coming back in V with a new look and playstyle significantly increased interest in the character.
  • F.A.N.G to an extent. While he's more a Base Breaker than a pure Scrappy, his reveal trailer didn't make good first impressions on fans, many feeling he is far too silly to be taken seriously. In the game proper, however, his comical quirks are toned down and shown mostly through his gameplay ^note similarly to Zant in Hyrule Warriors while his Story Mode and others play up his more competent traits such as his assassin skills, scientific expertise, determination and bravery, and his loyalty to Bison, thus making his role as Bison's right-hand man far more believable. That said, he still has his share of detractors.
  • The same can also be said for Abigail. While still the most controversial of the Season 2 fighters, he's viewed more positively than he was when he was first revealed, being a Base-Breaking Character at worst, and has since built a small but solid following who find him entertaining and his fighting style fun to use. Having Xander Mobus as his voice actor also helped to win some over.
  • Amazingly, Seth receives this. Back in IV, he was despised for having a bland design, a moveset that was literally copied from other characters and being an obscenely cheap Final Boss. His return addresses these issues by giving him a new design that's much more distinctive, a bigger emphasis on his unique attacks, and allowing him to copy one of his opponent's attacks during battle, making his copying feel more like a special ability than a shortcut. In terms of characterization, his fracturing Inferiority Superiority Complex being put in the forefront also made him much more unnerving, entertaining, and overall more interesting a villain for many.
  • When Kage was released, he was universally decried as the worst character in the game due to his complete inability to do what he was designed to do (let alone anything); while ostensibly an ultra-aggressive rushdown character with big, flashy combos, he had no way to safely start those combos or apply any sort of pressure, and with zero defensive options, he had nothing to fall back on. Season 5 brought a retool and a slew of buffs, and Kage was finally able to be the rushdown king that he was supposed to be, while his generally highly balanced state was viewed as a breath of fresh air in a game notorious for toxic and obnoxious high and top-tiers.
  • While Dan has never been a particularly unpopular or disliked character, the idea of having a Joke Character in a modern competitive fighting game does not always sit well with players, as such a character would be taking a valuable roster slot. Even before his evolution into a Lethal Joke Character in Street Fighter IV, community manager Seth Killian was skeptical of his inclusion for the aforementioned reasons. In a game still fairly divisive as Street Fighter V, his return was met with a lukewarm reception compared to the others announced in the season pass. In his transition to Street Fighter V, however, Dan has been carefully adjusted to become a competitively practical character that in no way intentionally undermines the player. Without losing any of his trademark goofy mannerisms in the process and being highly fun to play and watch, Dan quickly won the hearts of many players and cemented his place as a welcome addition to the game.

S

• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Having to play Survival Mode to unlock alternate colors. Easy doesn't take too long, but Normal and Hard can be a slog to get through, with the enemy A.I. only becoming challenging at the last few levels, after you've been fighting braindead opponents for ten or twenty minutes straight. Before the June update, you couldn't choose to continue if you die, or if you're online and it loses connection to the server and suddenly boots you to the main menu. Now you can continue... at the expense of hard-to-acquire Fight Money. Even worse, this doesn't just need to be done per character and difficulty level, but per costume. A later update would automatically unlock all colors for DLC costumes and characters, and you can purchase an all colors unlock in the shop with Fight Money, but if you plan on doing it through survival prepare for a long grind.
  • The 8-frame input delay. Doubly so after it was discovered to be intentional...after it was stated to not be intentional by Capcom USA.
  • Your choice of supplements in Survival being randomized. Surviving a stage with a sliver of health remaining and your healing option being "Health Recovery: Low" is quite spirit-breaking. Mitigated slightly with the Cody update, which now has separate items that can be used any time.
  • Unlike the Anti-Rage Quitting mechanics for Mortal Kombat X, Killer Instinct, or even Marvel vs. Capcom 3, there originally were no penalties whatsoever for a Rage Quit in SFV. Since win streaks earn actual in-game currency, the game played host to a ridiculous number of rage quits and lag switches until a penalty system was finally implemented with the patch that introduced Guile. More details here.
  • Event Battles, introduced in Arcade Edition, have a few issues. First is that you have to pay Fight Money each time you want to do one. If you lose, you get nothing and have to pay to try again. This can get problematic, especially since AE eliminated Fight Money rewards from single-player modes and cut FM earned from missions by half. Secondly, the events that award FM and experience limit the number of times you can play them. Even if you lose, that counts as a play. The events are usually set up such that even if you win only one of your plays you come out ahead, but it still feels very limiting.
  • Fighting Chance, introduced in June 2018, is SFV's loot box system, and comes with all of the annoyances. You can spend a lot of Fight Money in pursuit of special costumes only available through the system and come away with just battle items.
  • The June 2018 update attempts to alleviate the pain of playing through Survival with Battle Items. The items themselves are not a problem, but the way you get them is — you get several for completing a Survival run and can earn them through Fighting Chance draws. This means that prepping for a big Survival run can involve playing easier runs a few times to build up items, which is still a grind.
• Shipping: After Laura's win quote against Zeku made it clear that she thinks he's sexy in his old age, and Zeku's win quote against Laura has him calling her a "spicy flower" and a "dangerous temptress", the two of them became a very popular ship.
• So Okay, It's Average: The character Story Modes don't offer much and really only serve to build up to the theatrical Story Mode.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • The Jiggle Physics on the characters tend to be a little awkward. Necalli's braids frequently clip through his body and spaz the heck out. F.A.N.G's qipao also has problems, with his long sleeves consistently clipping into the ground and freaking out in one of his moves. The long side of Laura's hair starts spinning in place in some of her win poses.
  • The "A Shadow Falls" story cutscenes suffer heavily from this, due to relying on motion capture that doesn't account for the stylized outfits and proportions all the characters have. It's hard to take things seriously when every other scene has something with the jiggle physics going bonkers, or problems like Rashid's pointy hook-beard clipping into his chest whenever he looks down. Special mention goes to a moment near the end where Ibuki's hair and Birdie's jacket flap around at light-speed.

T

• Tainted by the Preview:
  • Fans were excited for the online beta that was offered as an incentive for pre-ordering the game. When it finally came time for the first beta, it was riddled with connection issues, and had to be shut down early and postponed. This also led to something of a Broken Base, split between those who understood that this was a beta test and that there would be issues, and those who were angry at Capcom that they didn't get to play the game, as promised.
  • After winning the first ever SFV Capcom Pro Tour premiere tournament at Final Round near the end of March, Korean player Infiltration was handed the mic and asked a question that had been on fans' minds heading into the event; if we could see a trailer for Alex. Capcom told everyone to sit down... and played Rashid's theme. Then after recapping the event, the Capcom Fighters stream went out playing "Jazzy NYC '99," the 3rd Strike version of Alex's theme, and cut out fifteen seconds later before coming back on for the replay—which started with Rashid's theme. This is after the game's rocky launch and a lack of information making it seem possible the patch scheduled for March, which would contain Alex and a lot of the features people have been asking for, could be delayed. May also be a case of Mis-blamed; the person trolling the stream was Honzo Gonzo, who does not work for Capcom.
  • A lot of fans were excited about the first DLC character Alex, who was set to appear in March 2016. As the month progressed, fans weren't happy that the first batch of DLC was released at the end of March.
  • The update containing Ibuki was originally scheduled for release in May 2016. Instead, however, it delayed until the end of June, which was announced only two days before the end of May, after the reveal trailer for Ibuki came out. This is simply further twisting the knife for fans who were fed up with how poorly Capcom had handled the game's launch, post-release updates, and communication on the the game and its development.
  • Capcom's December 2018 announcement that Season 4 will not have a pass (meaning players will have to buy characters and costumes one by one) did not sit well with some players and gave competitive players more fuel on blaming casuals for causing Capcom to fully backpedal on its original DLC program for the game, an aggravator after the whole Season 3 fighter balance and Fight Money debacle. Thankfully near the end of Season 4, you can buy the upgrade and get all of Season 4's characters should you wait.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Balrog and Ed's friendship coming to a sudden and unfortunate end. Over the course of the game, it becomes clear that while Balrog is still a jerkass, he does have something of a friendship with Ed, with Balrog being the one who had basically raised him. When Ed decides to part ways with Balrog in order to find himself, find others like him, and calm his concerns that his growing Psycho Power will hurt Balrog, the latter tries to prove to Ed that he isn't a danger to him by fighting him. After Ed wins the fight, Balrog tells him to beat it, and he sounds surprisingly choked up about it. Balrog is basically losing the closest thing he's had to a friend throughout the entire series.
  • Poor, poor Seth. His story finally shows the true depths of his insanity, and it's not pretty. All of his insecurities have bubbled to the surface and the resultant emotional overflow has left him chasing the ghost of his "father" Bison. With nothing left but his hate for the man who created him, he desperately seeks out Bison only to find Ed and Falke, who contain his Psycho Power. Unfortunately, by the end, Seth is left tragically divorced from reality, a prisoner in both his mind and body, frantically flailing about and trying to kill a hallucination of Bison.
  • Rose's story mode. Her efforts to prevent the end of the world by destroying Bison? It was All for Nothing. The world is still headed towards destruction, as she sees when she fights G, and now there is nothing that can be done to prevent it. Worse? We don't even know what sort of force will lead to the world's end. It could be anyone, ranging from G to Gill or even possibly Necalli, who may still be alive after being beaten by Akuma.
• That One Attack:
  • R. Mika has several:
    • Her V-Trigger, which allows her to summon her tag team partner, Nadeshiko, and force an opponent to guess and block. Guess wrong and it's a guaranteed combo. Guess right and she still gets a mix-up afterward. The fact that Nadeshiko comes from off-screen and can be difficult to see coming (especially if the camera is moving or at an odd angle) only makes it worse.
    • Second is her Passion Rope Throw, a hit-throw which she gets from a relatively easy normal. The throw tosses the opponent to the right or left, usually into the corner for a wall-bounce and followup. Like most of her attacks, this leads into a guaranteed mix-up, whereupon she may be able to toss you right back into the corner and start the process all over again.
  • Nash has his Critical Art, which has gained similar ire to Abel's second Ultra Combo from Street Fighter IV: it's fast and can be used to punish from a huge distance away. What makes it even stronger than Abel's, however, is that Nash can combo into his, even from something relatively minor like a successful jump-in or a heavy attack.
  • Menat's Critical Art is even worse than Nash's. It doesn't go far as his but it's even faster to the point where it's even effective as a reversal. And just like Nash, Menat can combo into this.
  • Birdie's Bull Revenger is notorious for how much distance it covers and how much damage it does. Even worse is that the move is relatively slow, so getting hit by it is usually your own fault. However, you also can't be so scared of it as to try and anticipate it the whole match, because then Birdie can just have his way with you. The upside is that if you do manage to react in time and jump before he reaches you, you can land a big punish.
• That One Level:
  • The Kanzuki Beach stage. It's great fun most of the time, and might even be a Best Level Ever for some, since it is a beautiful stage featuring bikini-clad cameos from Rival Schools characters Tiffany and Hinata, and Street Fighter III Judgement Girls Julia, Rifa, Toli and Anna. However, the stage has one fatal flaw: The waves of the ocean that come from the right side of the screen. The water level is quite low, but it's high enough to provide an unfair advantage for Birdie players. Birdie's V-Skill has him able to eat a banana and throw the peel to the floor, or chug a can of soda and roll the can across the ground. The water and the waves are able to mostly or completely hide these traps, making it harder for the opponent to avoid them. As a result, the stage was immediately banned at EVO 2016.
  • The Skies of Honor stage. Both fighters are on top of an airplane duking it out throughout a city which seems to be Dubai, very similar to the Super Smash Bros. level Lylat Cruise. Really cool in concept, very confusing otherwise. The problem here is when the plane has to turn, but the stage itself isn't turning, the background is. Players may get dizzy on the stage, especially when they are completely focused in high pressure situations. Because of this, this stage was banned during Capcom Cup 2016.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • The music is generally hailed as one of the strong suits of this game, with both interesting new tracks and strong rearrangements galore. In fact, most themes with both SFIV and SFV versions usually have more people saying the V versions are better. Except for Juri's theme. Whereas IV had powerful, erratic instrumentals conveying the imminent danger of facing Juri, V went the low-key route with a pulsating club rave-style remix that's well out of place with the rest of the game's soundtrack and far less exciting by design. The result is a track that is widely panned as the worst in the game and even has some wishing they had directly reused the IV version in V instead. The negative reception to Juri's theme is practically a meme in and of itself by this point.
  • Juri herself has gotten this, with her fanbase torn about their feelings regarding her revamped moveset. Aside from most of her normals and a few superficially-similar special moves, Juri plays nothing at all like she did in SSFIV. On a pro level, Juri is widely considered to be the worst character in the game, as she is wildly unsafe, requires a ton of setup to have anything resembling a decent offensive game, and has a nearly nonexistent defensive game; to add insult to injury, most of her matchups against the top tiers are nigh-unwinnable. Aside from a few extremely rare surprise picks, she has seen no tournament play whatsoever. Season 3 gave her some buffs, but the general consensus is that while the buffs DO help, they still don't adequately address her serious core issues; while she may definitely be better, she's still shit.
  • The update with Urien also included a security system on PC, to prevent people from using memory hacks and other mods for getting fight money and unlocking things extremely easily. Not only did this cause the game to stop running on many machines, and prevent stream recording software from hooking into the game, but a bit of datamining revealed the security was handled via a rootkit.^note A driver named "Capcom.sys" placed in system32 that ran whatever code was fed to it at kernel level, meaning any piece of malware could call itself "Street Fighter V" and use it to access anything and everything on your machine. Windows has security measures in place to prevent situations exactly like this from happening; the driver goes out of its way to disable them. This was a massive security risk for the user's computer, leading to the update quickly blowing up in Capcom's face, and they rolled back the anti-hacking measures before the day was over.
  • In December 2018, Capcom implemented optional in-game ads during matches and loading screens. While the game does compensate you for viewing these ads, the reward is so tiny (up to 12 FM per match at launch, when a new character costs 100000 FM) it might as well not exist, and activating them places logos on the most ridiculous places on character models (such as replacing Guile's American flag tattoo, the kanji when Akuma uses his Raging Demon, or even on one of the child skulls on Dhalsim's necklace, which especially bad considering their origin). Naturally, the fans who still stuck with the game so far were not pleased at all, and other people jokingly or seriously called it proof that we are headed towards an Advert-Overloaded Future. Less than a month later, the Sponsored Content was disabled, although it's unclear if this is a response to the backlash or simply because they didn't have anything left to advertise.^note The Capcom Pro Tour, the subject of the first wave of sponsored content, had ended, so there would be little point in advertising it.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Doubling as Badass Decay, this is a major complaint against Necalli following the release of the Cinematic Story Mode. The development team and the game itself spent a great amount of time hyping him up as this great terror comparable to the likes of Bison, Akuma, and Gill, with his story prologue showing him devouring Ryu, Dhalsim, and Bison. All this build up sadly leads to an outright embarrassing display in the story itself where he has little to no bearing on the plot. He shows up mainly to fight the three victims on his list and gets his ass handed to him each time. After being defeated by Ryu, he leaves and is never seen again for the rest of the story, accomplishing practically nothing in the end. The expanded character stories end up twisting the knife even further as Necalli only gets to make apperances in Balrog's and Akuma's. While it's confirmed that Necalli managed to survive his encounter with Ryu, his only reward is losing to both Balrog and Akuma in their story modes, with the latter fight implying that he was Killed Off for Real to boot.

U

• Ugly Cute: This is the fans' reaction to the Blanka-chan doll, basically saying "it's hideous, and I want it."
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley:The reaction Cammy's been getting from some Japanese fans seems to be originating from such a sentiment. Her face was more in line with real life proportions than the beefy, almost made-of-clay look of the other characters. As a result, some fans found it off-putting, though it was evidently altered after complaints, which has been well-received in Japan.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Nash, who has been considered dead, in-universe, since Alpha 3, finally returns to the series. ^note Out of universe, Nash has been acknowledged as alive by Capcom since the release of Street Fighter IV. However, their method of announcing it, a Japanese character relations chart, made the knowledge very obscure.
  • Few expected Birdie, of all people, to make a comeback. Fewer still expected him to eat donuts and chili pepper to power himself up. James Chen hilariously lampshades the eating bit:
  James: "[Birdie] tried to eat a donut and got punished for it..." (Beat) "... never thought I'd say that."
  • Despite being quite popular, and teased by Yoshinori Ono since Street Fighter IV, R. Mika's return was quite a surprise.
  • No one expected Karin, another fan favorite, to make it in, so her inclusion was a pleasant surprise.
  • Kolin. In her first appearance in Street Fighter III, she barely had a role, appearing only in Dudley's New Generation/2nd Impact ending and during the boss fight against Gill in 3rd Strike. While she plays a much larger part in the story of V, she never displayed any fighting ability prior to her debut as a playable character.^note Except in the UDON comics, and even then, she displayed no ice powers.
  • It took awhile, but SFV finally introduced its first Final Fight character. But no, it's not Guy, Cody, or even Haggar. Would you ever guess that Abigail, the 5th boss of the first Final Fight game was chosen for Season 2 DLC? Up until now, his appearance count amounts to reappearing in newer ports of FF1 and a pair of cameo appearances in Guy's stage in Street Fighter Alpha 2 and the Mad Gear Hideout stage in Street Fighter X Tekken and Ultra Street Fighter IV.
  • Zeku, Guy's master. He briefly made his first appearance in Guy's Street Fighter Alpha 2 ending. What makes his appearance so unexpected is that when it comes to video games, if you exclude subsequent ports of SFA2, he hadn't appeared in anything else for 21 years before he showed up out of nowhere as a playable character in SFV. If that wasn't enough, his Story Mode campaign reveals that he is the founder of the Strider organization, which places Canon Welding in the equation.
  • In Story Mode, Juni and Oro make an appearance. While Juni made cameos around Cammy and Juri in SFIV and was an Enemy Unit in 2005's Namco × Capcom, Oro, like many of his SFIII kin, hasn't seen any action since 3rd Strike in 1999.
  • Dan's sister Yuriko was last seen in the dubiously canon Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter, so her appearance running the shop came out of left field for many.
  • Though E. Honda had been all but expected due to rumors, leaks, and Ono himself teasing his inclusion on Twitter, the other two characters revealed in the Summer Bundle were definitely a surprise. Poison had been excluded from almost all things Mad Gear related, from the Ring of Justice stage to Abigail's story mode (where her counterpart Roxy had a cameo), and the Final Fight character speculated about most was Sodom. This goes double for newcomer Lucia, who hadn't been seen anywhere since Final Fight 3 and certainly hadn't even been considered by anyone as a possibility.
  • The inclusion of Gill came as a surprise, as in his previous appearances, he had been a non-playable boss character, and a very overpowered one at that. In addition, Gill was widely assumed to have been deconfirmed as soon as Urien dressed up as him for Halloween one year.
  • Given his universally despised status and being visibly Killed Off for Real, no one would have ever expected Seth to return. Even more unexpected was him being redesigned to have a female body based on Juri with his regular one as just an alternate costume.
  • Most characters shown in the Summer Update for Season V were fan favorites that were either expected (Dan Hibiki) or already showed up as cameos in the story mode (Oro and Rose), but the real surprise is Akira Kazama, the first Rival Schools character to make a canonical appearance in the series, especially considering how Final Fight was seemingly thought to be the only sister series in the Street Fighter verse to strictly have any playable characters making an appearance in this game.

V-W

• Visual Effects of Awesome: The initial reveal trailer already looked better than Street Fighter IV did, what with a more realistic, smooth quality take on the hypermuscular aesthetic of its predecessor, and each new look at the game and each new character reveal continues to show steady improvement. Using the Unreal Engine 4 helps as well.
• Win Back the Crowd:
  • The official reveal trailer shown during Capcom Cup 2017 for Season 3 characters of the upcoming Arcade Edition has done this with long time critics of the game. Unlike Season 2, which not only kept the upcoming characters secret until shortly before their release, but only included brand new characters aside from Akuma, the Season 3 trailers, after some initial misdirection, showed every character that's coming and provided numerous fan favorites in addition to a few new faces.
  • G wound up doing this for the new roster additions for Season 3. The reactions to the roster additions for the season ran the gamut from apathy (primarily Cody, who was viewed as decent but not spectacular) to out-and-out hatred (Falke, who was widely decried as a terribly-designed and fundamentally broken gimmick character and was bad enough on release to be viewed as a borderline Joke Character), but G was almost universally embraced as a cool, interesting, fun, and most importantly, highly viable new addition with a gimmick that was legitimately useful but was also something that he wasn't overly reliant on, who wasn't obnoxious to face like many of the other top tiers, and was strong without being a Game-Breaker. Similarly, both Gill and Seth were viewed as being excellent additions to the roster whose playstyles have made them some of the most fun characters to play in the roster thus far.
  • Have a problem with DLC, then the Champion Edition is for you. Unsurprisingly, the update caused a spike in sales as Street Fighter V now sits at 4.7 million in lifetime.
  • Overall, it can be said that in spite of the rocky release, V had managed to overcome its reputation over time to the point many of its detractors from earlier years can wholeheartedly recommend it in its current state. Much thanks was pointed towards Takayuki Nakayama and Yusuke Hashimoto, who took over the reigns of the franchise following Yoshinori Ono's departure from Capcom, and were praised for an overall amazing level of transparency at which they released information and explanations about how the game worked during Season 5. As such, much excitement was had when they essentially returned to these roles for Street Fighter 6.
• WTH, Costuming Department?:
  • Ken's premium costume has been the subject of mockery due to its everyman look of jeans, T-shirt, and a jacket with spiked hair.
  • Alex's alternate costumes haven't fared well. His story costume has its share of fans, but his premium outfit is pretty widely reviled, not just because of its appearance, but because a lot of players were hoping for a classic Alex costume.
  • All of Laura's costumes are a massive case of love-it-or-hate-it. She's intended to be over-the-top sexy and for better or worse, that's what you get.
  • Ryu and Chun-Li's Red Bull sponsored B-Boy and B-Girl outfits. Seeing Ryu wear a hip-hop themed outfit is thoroughly ridiculous, especially with the Flavor Flav-inspired clock necklace. Chun-Li ends up looking like a completely different person, and the outfit also gives her shiny skin that ends up looking really weird, especially with the second color scheme that makes her tomato red like Hakan. You'll either think they're the worst outfits in the game or that they're so bad, they're good.
  • A minor case with Juri's Lilith costume. A lot of fans believe that a Morrigan costume would have suited her better. Specifically, because the Lilith costume somehow makes Juri go from being having a very well-endowed chest, a fact that she actually points out in Abigail's story, to being completely flat-chested. Other crossover costumes usually maintain some aspect of the wearer's original design to make it clear that it's cosplay, such as Nash still having his scars in his Captain Commando costume, and while Juri still maintains her hair color and eyepatch, her becoming completely flat-chested for this costume seems rather odd. Some believe the costume would have been better off in the hands of a character who isn't as well-endowed as her, such as Sakura or Ibuki. Thankfully, the costume code (3P + LK + Up) gives Juri her bosom back.
  • Birdie's CPT 2018 costume, which has Birdie dress as the 2017 CPT champion MenaRD, has been heavily derided as being boring at best and purely self-indulgent on Mena's part at worst. Birdie players were especially disappointed, since the character doesn't have many costumes to choose from compared to some other characters, and the long wait to the costume's reveal only further soured its reception.
  • Menat being the one to receive the Devilotte crossover costume did not go over well. Not only does Menat not look anything like Devilotte or look like the kind of person who would wear a Pimped-Out Dress like Devilotte's, but prior to its reveal, it was seen as being the perfect crossover costume for Karin (even though she'd already gotten Ingrid), considering that the two characters already look a lot alike, have similar haughty personalities, and even share the same trademark Noblewoman's Laugh.
  • Gill's Pyron costume is considered bar none to be the most unnecessarily distracting skin in not just the game, but perhaps the entire franchise. The need to make Gill even more bright and fiery in order to fit Pyron's design would be bad enough, but the effects also naturally camouflage his EX moves and fire damage like from Dhalsim or Poison, and on top of that, Capcom also felt the need to add a heat distortion effect that makes his model even harder to read. Unsurprisingly, it quickly received the most demand to be banned competitively, a request which (at least with the CPT) was fulfilled with gusto.
  • Even though there's several electricity-based monsters in Monster Hunter such as the ever-popular Zinogre or the relevant newcomer Tobi-Kodachi, Blanka's crossover costume is, for some strange reason, Nergigante - a monster that is actually weak to thunder.
• The Woobie:
  • Nash was already a Woobie in the Alpha series due to him dying in almost all of his endings. ^note The only time where he doesn't die is in his Alpha 3 ending. However, he does die in Guile's ending. His Story Mode in this game manages to make him an even bigger Woobie than before. His story mode here, fittingly titled "The Man Who Lost It All," confirms that Nash's Alpha 2 ending (the one where he's betrayed and shot by his Air Force comrades and sent careening off a Venezuelan waterfall) is his true canon death (as opposed to his Heroic Sacrifice to destroy Bison and his Psycho Drive in Alpha 3 that was previously assumed to be canon). Combined with his "Franken-Nash" revival and darker personality, you just can't help but feel bad for the guy. To make matters worse, it's implied by several characters that even though he's walking around, his body is physically dead and won't last long. And this gets outright confirmed in the Cinematic Story Mode where Helen tells him that his body will eventually decay—and then he tells her that he knew this already. Still, Charlie gets a Dying Moment of Awesome when he sacrifices himself to weaken Bison so Ryu can have a fighting chance against him.
  • The Cinematic Story Mode ends up making Rashid this. He has spent the entire game searching for his dear friend and attempting to rescue her from Shadaloo's clutches. Tragically, he was far too late. F.A.N.G had already murdered her. Still, like Charlie, he gets a Crowning Moment of Awesome when he avenges his friend by beating the crap out of F.A.N.G and using his friend's final secret code to disable the Black Moons.
  • Poor, poor März. Not only was she the only one of the Dolls to die after their brainwashing was undone, but it's a case of Kill the Cutie, as she was the shyest and most soft-spoken of the Dolls, with the least combat skills. Worse yet, her Heroic Sacrifice may have been All for Nothing, since F.A.N.G clearly survived the fall, and it's unclear if he survived the Shadaloo base's destruction after witnessing Bison's death. There's always the chance that she's just hiding, but it's not looking good for her.
    • As of Street Fighter 6 it's revealed that she's definitely dead, as confirmed by Cammy in her max Bond conversation in World Tour, saying that "it's already too late for one of them". As if to twist the knife further, said conversation ends with an image of Cammy and all the Dolls in their new and happier lives, with the sole exception of März, who simply is not in the image at all.
  • Seth's state in this game is truly pitiable. Gone is the cold, calculating mastermind we saw in IV. In V, he is trapped in an Ironic Hell: a body with a pre-existing name that constantly announces itself as "Doll Unit Zero", as if to undermine his own existence. Not only that, he's currently in the process of a massive Villainous Breakdown, his ego wounded and bleeding from his Humiliation Conga in the previous game. His plans laid to waste, defeated by his "perfect test subject" Ryu, further brought down a peg by his own creator Bison, and finally betrayed and killed by his own creation Juri. Now, with even his ambitions possibly gone with the death of Bison and Shadaloo, Seth has been left with nothing but desperation to assert himself as a powerful, unique being. His Inferiority Superiority Complex that he tried so much to hide has finally bubbled to the surface, rendering him a Psychopathic Manchild throwing a tantrum.