Characters / Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors

Darkstalkers characters index
Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors | Darkstalkers: Updated Versions | Other Characters

NOTE: Spoilers will be left unmarked in the examples below. You Have Been Warned!

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Characters debuting in the first Darkstalkers game.

• For Donovan, Hsien-Ko, Q-Bee, B.B. Hood, Lilith, and Jedah, check the Darkstalkers: Updated Versions sheet.

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Introduced in Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors / Vampire

Morrigan Aensland

Queen of the Night

My victories, like my beauty, are eternal!

Class: Succubus
Origin: Kingdom of Scotland, 1678
Voiced by: ^note Yayoi Jinguji (games, Japanese), Saffron Henderson (Western cartoon), Kathleen Barr (Night Warriors OVA), Yumi Touma (Dengeki Bunko drama CD), Rei Sakuma (Vampire Hunter OVA and drama CD, Gunbird 2), Erin Fitzgerald (Cross Edge, English), Rie Tanaka (Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Project × Zone and Teppen, Japanese), Siobhan Flynn (Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite and Teppen, English)

The series' most recognizable, prominently featured character, and something of a Series Mascot, Morrigan is the daughter of Belial Aensland, born with power that rivaled S class high nobles. Fearing that Morrigan would lose control of that power, Belial split her soul in half, taking part of her power. But since the two halves of her soul were trying to return to each other, Belial further split one half of her soul into two in order to weaken the drawing effect. And so Morrigan's soul was split into three: she retained a third of her soul, another third was sealed in Belial's body and the last third was sealed in a separate dimension, eventually materializing as her "sister," Lilith.

But Morrigan grew up not knowing anything about the above events, spending her days as a combat-crazy Rebellious Princess. While trying to find some fun diversion, she was sucked into Jedah's Majigen dimension, where she meets Lilith, and after they battle, the sisters reunite, gaining Morrigan immense power.

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• Adaptational Ugliness: In the Darkstalkers cartoon, Morrigan is much less attractive than her original video game counterpart.
• Adaptational Villainy: In canon, she has rather ambiguous morality, with her Japanese victory lines indicating she is not above draining people to death, though the only one she explicitly does this to is the Big Bad, Pyron, and those same Japanese victory lines also indicating she tends to let her opponents live. She's mostly treated as seeking some form of excitement. However, most non-canon adaptations present her as more of a typical succubus, being genuinely evil and murdering innocent people.
  • In the U.S. cartoon, she serves Pyron, albeit against her will, to take over the world, and attacks random humans to satiate her.
  • In the UDON comics, she willingly tricks and kills men by sleeping with them and draining their souls. She also stabs one of Demitri's thralls In the Back to steal her form and infiltrate a gathering of his followers.
  • In the manga-crossover Darkstalkers/Red Earth Darkstalkers Maleficarum, she kills men by draining their souls after seducing them. She also tries to take the soul of Jon Talbain.
  • In Teppen, she is portrayed as a malevolent and despicable succubus who cares only about draining souls and fighting strong enemies. She's unable to understand why demons such as Dante would help humans to begin with.
• Adaptational Wimp: In the UDON comics, although possessing the same abilities as in the games (plus a few new ones, such as shapeshifting her body instead of just her clothes) Morrigan is far less potent than her game counterpart. Demitri dominates most of their fight in the final issue, and Pyron actually wipes the floor with both of them with no effort. In the crossover with Street Fighter, Morrigan finds herself outclassed and nearly killed by Chun-Li. The only times she wins a fight is when she attacks normal humans to eat their souls.
• Anime Chinese Girl: She dresses as one in one of her winning poses.
• Animal Motifs: Bats. Her wings (themselves batlike on their own) and clothing are composed of a group of shapeshifting bats, her Soul Fist projectile is a glowing bat (or a giant glowing bat skull in the ES version), and she becomes a bat with green hair when hit by Anakaris's Royal Judgement. These are likely a holdover from her initial concept as a vampire, as she didn't become a succubus until late in development, after she had already been designed and animated.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: Zigzagged. She's a Makai high noble, but has been explicitly confirmed as chaotic neutral by Capcom. However, in most adaptations outside the series' canon and crossovers, but especially in the UDON comics, she is an amoral and despicable monster, even worse than Demitri.
• As Long as It Sounds Foreign: Unlike her first name, which she shares with a Celtic deity, "Aensland" is a nonexistent surname in any Gaelic language. The nearest fit would be the Scottish surname Ainsley, though that’s perhaps too workaday for a succubus.
• Battle Aura: Morrigan is usually surrounded by a faint circular blaze of white or green fire.
• Big Fancy Castle: Inherited from her arch-demon father. Because of her thrill-seeking nature, Morrigan doesn't spend much time in it, considering her life in the castle boring and confining.
• Blood Knight: Combat and seduction are the only amusements of her endless life. Only after merging with Lilith does she become more interested in taking her duty as heir to the Aensland clan seriously.
• Breakout Character: Her popularity led to her being included in tons of Spin-Off and crossover games. By the turn of the century, she was more widely recognized than the entire Darkstalkers franchise itself. Tellingly, she takes up the most space in the cover art for Darkstalkers Resurrection.
• But Not Too Bi: Morrigan is stated to be bisexual, but aside from some flirting quotes she never explicitly shows any real attraction to women, and most media mainly feature her seducing only males.
• Capcom Sequel Stagnation: The living embodiment and prime example of this trope. Her sprite and voice remained the same in every single installment of the series — even in her crossover appearances — and it wasn't until Tatsunoko vs. Capcom that she finally got updated voicework and her ancient 1994 sprite was ditched.
• Cape Wings: Her clothing can be changed into a multitude of forms at will.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: In the manhua adaptation, Morrigan lusts after Demitri and is jealous of Felicia being with him.
• Cool Chair: In one victory pose, she creates a throne formed of levitating bats.
• Combat Sadomasochist: Her hedonistic tendencies and succubus nature mean that she derives sexual pleasure out of fighting tough opponents.
  I'm so glad you wanted to take me on, but you didn't have what it take to truly satisfy me.
• Combat Stilettos: Sports calf-length boots with a six inch heel. For her hard kick, she arcs back in a balletic motion, slicing the opponent with the tip of her boot.
• Combat Tentacles: When she's not turning her wings into blades, Morrigan sometimes uses her bats as such. This is made much more explicit in the OVA.
• Creepy Shadowed Undereyes: Subtly present in Darkstalkers and Night Warriors-era art, but it’s pretty much gone by the time of Vampire Savior. Akiman briefly touches on this aspect and how it contributes to her gothic look in Darkstalkers Official Complete Works.
• Curtains Match the Window: Gorgeous green eyes to go along with her gorgeous green hair.
• Depending on the Artist:
  • While her hair is consistently green, the exact shade of it can vary.
  • Canonically her eyes are supposed to be green, the same color as her hair, but a few sprites and artwork have her eyes in different colors, such as auburn, yellow, blue or a tan brown.
• Deuteragonist: She was supposed to be the second most important character, right after Demitri, but her popularity with fans made her the series’ primary mascot.
• Dimensional Traveler: The only means of travel between the Human World and Makai is a portal located roughly in the middle of Makai (The Gate). Morrigan is unique in that she is the only Darkstalker alive who can bypass this and directly travel to our world without the need to use The Gate, which makes sense for a demon. As a Rebellious Princess and Thrill Seeker succubus, she mostly uses this to shirk her responsibilities and satiate her hedonistic tendencies in the human world.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Most of her victory quotes are suggestive in nature.
  Soon your pain will turn into an indescribable ecstasy!
• Dominatrix: A picture is worth a thousand words...◊ While cut from the international version of MvC, it remains in the international version of MvC2. This pose is absent in the mainline games, although one of her win-poses has her swap out her gloves and leggings for long black boots.
• Doppelgänger Attack: "Darkness Illusion" has her create a duplicate of herself on the opposite side of her opponent, and they both deliver a synchronized flurry of attacks. "Astral Vision" creates a duplicate on the opposite side of the screen, which mirrors all of her moves for a short period of time.
• Double Entendre: The undisputed queen of this, as seen in her win-quotes:
  Don't be so scared. It only hurts a little... then you'll just feel like you're falling into darkness.
  It doesn't turn me on unless you're coming at me.
  You're as energetic as ever, just don't be in such a rush.
  (Vs Tekkaman) You're quite the tenacious one. It's a good thing we have all night for you to expend your energy.
  (Vs Phoenix Wright) I see you like to run your mouth. I wonder if you can use it for anything else.
  (Vs Thor) Done already? Where's your stamina? You've spent too long gripping your hammer.
• Dream Stealer: One of her powers, as well as a necessity to help keep herself alive. Thankfully, the results are harmless, with the dream merely fading out of memory and the dreamer merely having an Erotic Dream.
  Let go of those bitter memories. I'll make you feel good.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: In the first game, her quotes are more innocent and she seems to be shy, in contrast to later games where she's The Tease.
• Energy Ball: Her Soul Fist move is a bat-shaped projectile made of energy. She can also use a stronger version of it, making it larger and shaped like a large bat's skull.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Despite being a demonic succubus, she isn't purely evil, and doesn't kill humans.
  • If paired with Tavia in Gunbird 2, their shared ending depicts Morrigan saving the young girl's life and then providing her with the special medicine she needs to save her sick mother.
• Evil Duo: Her and Demitri in the American cartoon.
• Evil Versus Evil: In the UDON comics. She fights against Demitri, Pyron and Jedah (and eventually against Gill from the Street Fighter franchise) on an even keel.
• Extreme Omnisexual: She has the same suggestive win quotes against male and female characters, regardless of their appearance and/or origin. Downplayed in later titles, where she notes that machines 'aren't her thing', and expresses a desire specifically for 'men'.
• Famous Ancestor: An infamous ancestor. In the cartoon, she's descended from none other than Morgan le Fay.
• Femme Fatale:
  • A potentially more benevolent version, taking cues from the Good Bad Girl and The Tease (or The Charmer for that matter) in the games, as she is ultimately fighting against threats to humanity.
  • The American cartoon turns her into more of a typical female villain: she's extremely vain (even more so than in the games), is implied to actually eat her victims, and (with few exceptions; Rikuo is one of them) hates members of the opposite sex. There, she most definitely qualifies as a Vamp.
• Final Boss:
  • She is Demitri's final boss in Vampire Savior, since he wants to take over Makai.
  • She is Lilith's final boss in Vampire Savior, since Lilith wants to take over Morrigan's body.
• Fusion Dance: With Lilith, in both of their endings in Vampire Savior, with slightly different results in each. The original ending(s) implied Type 1 (Composite), but this was apparently retconned by Capcom in the pair's following appearances into a mix of Type 2 (Power Booster) and sort-of Type 3 (Switcher), in that while it's Morrigan who is dominant, Lilith has been shown to exist as some sort of Split Personality-like entity, and is able "come out and play" at her own discretion. It should be noted that the Vs. titles are non-canon, and Morrigan's appearances there are supposed to represent the full scale of her powers.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Morrigan is one of the most powerful demons in the series, according to her backstory. Gameplay-wise she's a Shoto Clone.
• Gamer Chick: Some crossover material such as Tatsunoko vs. Capcom and the Project X Zone games imply that she's enjoys playing video games in her spare time, and seems to be no slouch at fighting games herself either. Considering that she literally needs exicitement to stay alive, keeping active by playing video games makes perfect sense.
• Gorgeous Gaijin: Morrigan is Scottish (named for a Celtic deity) and is literally sex-appeal personified in her capacity as a succubus, who are an Inhumanly Beautiful Race.
• Gorgeous Garment Generation: Can use her shapeshifting powers to turn her outfit into anything she wants, often including Impossibly Cool Clothes or Fanservice outfits like a qipao.
• Happily Adopted: She was adopted by Belial, yet she doesn't at all have any issue with this and is shown to care deeply for him.
• Head-Turning Beauty: She's considered to be gorgeous and seductive even by the standards of a succubus, an Inhumanly Beautiful Race.
• The Hedonist: Being a succubus, it comes with the territory. She actually feeds from pleasure, and rather than draining humans, she is quite happy to feed on any hedonistic diversion she can get in the human world, including fighting.
• Hell-Bent for Leather: One of her Victory Poses has her changing her clothes into a leather tank-top and miniskirt combo that bares her midriff.
• Hime Cut: Has this hairstyle in her default outfit, as appropriate for her status as princess/queen of Makai.
• Hypnotic Eyes: Some of her quotes imply her eyes have hypnotic properties, but this doesn't manifest in-game or in the story.
  Come, look into my eyes... Now you're a slave of darkness.
• Immortality Begins at Twenty: The succubus race lives for roughly 400 years. At age 10, they gain their curvy, voluptuous adult forms and retain their beauty even in death. The incubi, on the other hand, were (usually) never attractive to begin with, with 60% of them being gigantic mutant insectoid dragons and various Mix-and-Match Critters.
• Impossible Hourglass Figure: Sports pendulous breasts and a wasp-waist.
• Impossibly-Low Neckline: She has such a low-cut outfit that it's a wonder she's not a walking Wardrobe Malfunction, though as her clothing is magically-generated, it stays teasingly in place.
• It Amused Me: She sneaks to the human realm mostly to satiate her boredom. This is also usually her reason for tagging along in the various Crossover games.
• Jack of All Stats: Along with Demitri, she is considered to be a very well-rounded character, with both of them focusing a lot on fundamentals and solid pokes. They are also Shotoclones.
• Jet Pack: She dashes by transforming her wings into jet engines, which grant her extreme speed.
• Kiss of Death:
  • In her ending in Vampire, she sucks out Pyron's soul (leaving a withered husk) with a kiss. It's implied that this is one of the many ways Morrigan is able to claim a human's soul.
  • Her "Eternal Slumber" secret move starts with one.
  • She attempts this on a drifter in the second episode of the cartoon, though Donovan Bane interrupts before she could drain him dry.
  • In the first issue of the UDON comics she does this to Jack, an unsuspecting fisherman whom she drains dry.
• Lecherous Licking: Some of her in-game art features her licking her lips suggestively.
• Life Drinker: A viable choice for a succubus like Morrigan, as Aensland succubi are able to subsist off of a special secreted enzyme within their bodies, which forms when they are merely so much as physically and mentally stimulated, allowing them to avoid sucking life from beings as sustenance.
• Living Aphrodisiac: As a succubus, she's able to magically generate intense and spontaneous desire in mortal humans, with her skin/sweat/saliva inducing extreme lust upon contact. Only those with strong enough wills can resist her charms.
• Lust: Personified, but a much more positive case, as she veers more toward Ethical Slut territory.
• Macross Missile Massacre: Her Finishing Shower move has her using her Shapeshifter Weapon powers to turn her wings into cannon-like protrusions and expel a barrage of missiles made with her body matter.
• Meaningful Name: Named after a figure from Irish/Celtic mythology. While Morrigan wasn't born in Ireland (she was actually discovered in Scotland), she shares more than a few traits. For example, The Morrigan is the goddess of both fertility and war, not unlike Morrigan herself, and can also sustain herself by feeding on a person's dreams.
• Mecha Tropes: Between the drills, verniers, and missile volleys, she has quite a few abilities that hearken back to classic mecha anime conventions. Even her Soul Fist involves a Rocket Punch-esque pose and her wings becoming something similar to the Zeta Gundam's tail fin. Her Soul Eraser move from the Vs. games also involves literal laser cannons.
• Mercury's Wings: While she does have a more traditional pair of bat wings, she has a second pair extending from the sides of her head. And just like her main, she also uses them as a Shapeshifter Weapon.
• Ms. Fanservice: Morrigan is a beautiful succubus known for her buxom figure, and she's specifically animated with suggestive movements to emphasize her sex appeal. Her standard outfit is a skintight, stripperiffic Leotard of Power with nearly-detached sleeves, go-go boots, and a feather-frilled Impossibly-Low Neckline that makes it clear she is wearing nothing else underneath. Even some of her win-poses have her shapeshifting into various types of Fanservice Costumes.
• Mundane Utility: Some of her quotes suggest she uses her bats for trivial tasks, such as having them be a Human Pack Mule.
  Those bats around me? They hold my stuff when I go shopping!
• Muscles Are Meaningless: She may appear as a fairly slender woman, but she is a succubus and she often shows impressive feats of strength, such as her "Vector Drain" move — a Spinning Piledriver that she can even deliver to building-sized characters in Tatsunoko vs. Capcom.
• My Significance Sense Is Tingling: She's originally drawn by Pyron's presence, and later senses Lilith's sadness, prompting her to fuse with the latter.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Named after a figure from Irish/Celtic mythology whose name means "great queen," "phantom queen," or "terror." Morrigan is also a queen, and while friendly and moral, she’s still a demonic succubus
• Naughty Nurse Outfit: One of her cosplays in Pocket Fighter is a sexy nurse's uniform.
• No Challenge Equals No Satisfaction: She is one of the most powerful characters in Capcom's entire pantheon of fighting game characters. Rather than exercise this power, she limits her strength just enough so she can be an even match for her opponents, so that her fights can be fun (which she has a biological drive to do: in the world of Darkstalkers, succubi like Morrigan can literally die of boredom).
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Her UDON Comic version. She claims to free human men from their lives of toil and suffering by consuming their souls and making them live in eternal bliss as part of her. As the one victim we see detailed is outwardly happy, she clearly cares more for feeding on souls and satisfying her hunger, as opposed to "freeing" her victims.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Morrigan’s Scottish accent is inconsistent in Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, and TEPPEN, often slipping into an Irish accent or something else entirely.
• Orgasmic Combat: As a succubus who literally feeds on the sexual enjoyment she gets out of fighting, it's not surprising some of her voice lines sound very suggestive.
• Out with a Bang: Her bodily fluids (produced by any form of pleasure) can cause instant death to humans, as seen in the UDON comics.
• Parental Abandonment: Morrigan was adopted by Belial, so her actual father (and mother) are unknown.
• Person of Mass Destruction: The reason why Belial sealed part of her power away when she was born was because he feared she might lose control of it, and end up destroying the demon realm.
• Physical Goddess: When Morrigan was born, she was already an S-Class demon. Her power was hinted to be so great that Belial (a Physical God himself, considering that he was the strongest of the Three High Nobles of Makai and a Class S+ demon) split it into thirds. In Vampire Savior, Morrigan is presumably back at full strength, and might have actually become stronger due to her prior experiences.
• Pivotal Wake-up: Her pre-fight animation features her rising from the ground with the aid of her bats.
• Power Floats: Unless she's dashing, Morrigan levitates to approach her opponents and only makes contact with the ground when she gets knocked over.
• Power Glows: While she's levitating, she kicks up a visible trail of green flame as she moves forward.
• Power Incontinence: Being a S-Class succubus, she is one of the strongest Darkstalkers in existence, which forced her father Belial to split her soul apart, concluding that she would destroy herself otherwise, as she couldn't control her full potential until ready.
• Prehensile Hair: She whips her hair at the opponent for her light (jab) punch attack.
• Proud Beauty: She's very confident and proud of her appearance, and she often poses to show off her good looks and emphasize her sex appeal. Played up extensively in Pocket Fighter, where Morrigan's goal is to prove to the world that she's the strongest and most beautiful woman, so she challenges Chun-Li, the current title-holder for both claims, in a battle of female supremacy. In the end, Morrigan is victorious, but ultimately loses out to none other than Lilith, who unwittingly attracts the guys away from her.
  My victories, like my beauty, are eternal!
• Really 700 Years Old: Despite looking like a young woman, she was born in 1678 A.D.
• Rebellious Princess: As Belial's adopted daughter, she's the princess of Makai and heir to the Aensland clan. But as The Hedonist and a Thrill Seeker, she finds her responsibilities boring and often ignores or shirks them by sneaking away to the human realm to have fun.
  They say I get around. But it's so boring staying around the house all day. Don't you think?
• Relax-o-Vision: Featured in the Super Move "Eternal Slumber◊". If it connects, pink curtains close over the screen for a few seconds, during which Sexy Silhouettes provide a vague idea of what she's doing to her opponent.
• Rocket Punch: Her Soul Fist resembles one, as it involves her taking a Rocket Punch-esque pose, her wings transforming into something similar to the Zeta Gundam's tail fin as she fires it at her opponent.
• Scotireland: She was discovered as an infant by her adoptive father Belial in Scotland and her date of birth (1678 A.D.) coincides with the first appearance of a succubus in Scotland. Her name and some of her character quirks (Orgasmic Combat, Interplay of Sex and Violence, Sex Is Violence) are taken from a deity in Celtic Mythology, The Morrigan. In some appearances, she has a Scottish accent; in the Darkstalkers Maleficarum manga, Jon Talbain remarks on Morrigan's "strong Glasgow accent".
• Screw Yourself: Depicted/implied with Lilith via the infamous (official art) image of the pair naked (but still covered via Hand-or-Object Underwear and Scenery Censor) and suggestively embracing.
• Series Mascot: Morrigan is by far the most famous and recognizable of the Darkstalkers characters, and is the series’ biggest representative in Capcom's various crossover games, to the point she's more famous for her crossovers appearances than her actual role in the Darkstalkers games.
• Sex Goddess: Implied, given her nature as a succubus, and her boasts that men greatly enjoy her visits to the human realm. Even when she's portrayed as just being a Dream Stealer, it's suggested she "visits" the person in an Erotic Dream. The UDON comic also presents a man writhing in pleasure from just her touch, but she also drains him via sex, so it ultimately ends in an Out with a Bang situation.
• Sex Is Violence: Morrigan needs stimuli to keep herself alive (apparently, incubi and succubi can't survive for much longer than two full days without pleasure), so of course she enjoys the fight a little bit more than most.
  Arouse me some more, won't you? I want this to be a night I won't forget!
• Sexy Backless Outfit: It's usually obscured by the wings, but her outfit does bare her back.
• Sexy Silhouette: Her Super Move "Eternal Slumber◊" involves Morrigan shooting out a heart, and if it connects, a pink curtain covers the screen with only a suggestive silhouette of her as she "seduces" her opponent.
• Shapeshifter Weapon: Her wings and/or bats can be magically shapeshifted into various forms to aid her in combat, such as enhancing her mobility by turning into a Jet Pack or taking the shape of different kinds of weapons such as scythe-like blades, drills, spikes, a Wing Shield, and Combat Tentacles. She can even turn them into modern weaponry, such as missile volleys and literal laser cannons.
• Shapeshifting Lover: It's implied that she often visits the human realm to seduce her targets while shapeshifting to look like a normal human woman.
• She-Fu: Her fighting style, involving a lot of suggestive acrobatics, is Distracted by the Sexy refined into an art form. A particularly lethal art form.
• Shoryuken: Shadow Blade, an attack in which she arcs upward while one of her wings transforms into a scythe-like blade.
• Shotoclone: Downplayed; Soul Fist and Shadow Blade are your standard fare fireball and uppercut, though Morrigan normally lacks a Hurricane Kick, barring her Parasite Roll in Pocket Fighter. Twists include teleports, doppelgangers, and transmorphic wings, among other tricks.
• Sir Cameos-a-Lot: There are only 3 Darkstalkers games so far (excluding re-releases), but Morrigan appears a lot in crossovers involving Capcom, such as the Marvel vs. Capcom games, Namco × Capcom, Project × Zone and a few others.
• Spinning Piledriver: Her "Vector Drain" move has her grab her opponent and then, using her Jet Pack wings to lift them into the air, she flips and slams them into the ground head-first while spinning.
• Split at Birth: Morrigan's father Belial split off a portion of her power, which became Lilith, because he was afraid that she'd otherwise be so uncontrollably powerful that she'd suffer a Super-Power Meltdown.
• Statuesque Stunner: Makes the cut being a Head-Turning Beauty standing 172cm/5'8".
• Stripperiffic: Her standard outfit is formed from bats that swarm around her and magically transform into a very skintight leotard with nearly detached sleeves, go-go boots, and a feather-frilled Impossibly-Low Neckline. And there's nothing underneath.
• Succubi and Incubi: Morrigan feeds on lust and is a gorgeous succubus, a Life Drinker, a Living Aphrodisiac, and a Sex Goddess. Unlike more typical succubi, she can feed on souls via sex/kissing, and while her bodily fluids can kill people, she often simply indulges in hedonistic pleasures that include fighting or anything else she finds amusing.
• Taken for Granite: She turns herself into stone to avoid becoming Demitri's slave in his ending in 3.
• The Tease: A lot of her lines are flirtatious or sexually provocative. She specifically likes to taunt Demitri with her charms, knowing that he is smitten with her... at times.
• This Is a Drill: Some of her attacks uses her shapeshifting wings to form drills, most notably in her Shell Kick special and Valkyrie Turn super move.
• Thrill Seeker: While hedonistic pleasures energise her, Morrigan is quite eager to take on any new challenge or experience.
  Ahh, this thrill! There's nothing like a near-defeat to get me going.
• Toasted Buns: She can turn her wings into rocket boosters or a Jet Pack, giving this visual impression.
• The Ugly Guy's Hot Daughter: Morrigan is the adopted daughter of Belial. The one known artwork of Belial does not paint him to be as close as attractive to humans as Morrigan is.
• Upper-Class Twit: An insanely powerful demon who just wants to party. She also mixes this with shades of Rebellious Princess (she's the adopted daughter of the former ruler of Makai). For the most part, Morrigan shirks her responsibilities and causes headaches for her caretakers. It isn't until her father dies and especially when she fuses with Lilith that she begins to feel the need to be responsible.
• Victory Is Boring: As a Blood Knight and Thrill Seeker, she often expresses disappointment in her victory quotes, especially if it was an easy win.
  [if she wins the fight with high health] By the Abyss! You offer no challenge to me!
• Villain Protagonist: In the UDON comics, Morrigan is depicted as an amoral monster who tricks and kills innocent humans, being closer to a traditional succubus, yet she's still one of the main characters of the story.
• Violent Glaswegian: Exhibits Blood Knight tendencies and actually comes from Scotland. She's even given a Scottish accent in the cartoon and later crossover games.
• Wave-Motion Gun: For her Vs. series-exclusive Soul Eraser, her wings form into a giant cannon, which fires a devastating beam of energy . It's later removed in Tatsunoko vs. Capcom and Marvel vs. Capcom 3.
• Winged Humanoid: Sports draconian wings and an extra pair of miniaturized, presumably decorative ones on her head. She can shapeshift her wings into the form of a swarm of bats, or different kinds of weapons.
• Wing Shield: She's able to shapeshift her wings to grow larger and harder, and uses them to defend herself from attacks.
• With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: The main reason her father Belial sealed her powers is that he felt she would lack the maturity and control to use such strength, and become a danger to herself and the rest of Makai. Morrigan does finally gain back some of her powers when Jedah's meddling releases Lilith, with whom she fuses, regaining much of her previously-sealed strength.
• Wings Below The Waist: Played with. While Morrigan's wings technically extend somewhere from her lower shoulder blades, as seen when she's viewed from behind, in almost all artwork her wings frame her waist, enhancing her Ms. Fanservice status by drawing attention to her figure.
• Wolverine Publicity: Something Darkstalkers related? Morrigan will be there, in some shape or form.
• World's Best Warrior: In Darkstalkers 3, Morrigan reunites with Lilith and restores her power (although the final third is still missing) and becomes so powerful that she is capable of defeating Jedah. Giving that Belial himself, in spite of being a Darkstalker class SSS, considered Morrigan's power to be dangerous for him and Makai as a whole, it's clear Morrigan is one of the strongest characters in the series.
• World's Most Beautiful Woman: Morrigan is worshiped as the most beautiful succubus in Makai the Demon World — so much so that men and women alike cannot resist her allure. Even in the larger Capcom universe, the only character who gives her a run for her money is Chun-Li, and Morrigan actually has a rivalry with her over it in some crossovers.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: In Street Fighter vs. Darkstalkers, Morrigan uses this tactic on a duo of archaeologists in Brazil, by taking the form of a helpless female explorer with a twisted ankle. As soon as she has one of the men in her grasp, she completely sucks him dry.

Demitri Maximoff

Dark Prince

Is your blood as thin and weak as you? Let's find out, shall we?

Class: Vampire
Origin: Voivodeship of Transylvania, 1483 (present-day Romania)
Voiced by: ^note Nobuyuki Hiyama (games, Japanese), Akio Ōtsuka (Vampire Hunter OVA, Japanese), Michael Donovan (Western cartoon), Paul Dobson (Night Warriors OVA, English), Richard Epcar (Cross Edge, English)

The series’ original protagonist (hence the franchise's Japanese title Vampire), Demitri is the master of one of the seven noble families of Makai. One day he challenged Belial Aensland, Morrigan's father, one of the three high nobles, and the ruler of Makai, for the throne. The end result: he was defeated so badly that both he and his castle Zeltzereich were ripped through reality into the human world. For the next 100 years he was quietly restoring his lost powers all while drinking the blood of unlucky treasure hunters who dared to enter his castle. All of them became his servants.

When he restored most of his powers, Pyron dropped in to conquer Earth, and Demitri used this opportunity to defeat him and absorb Pyron's power, returning to full strength. When he felt that he was ready, he returned to Makai, only to find that Belial had died, and the result was a very serious power struggle. Before he could take advantage of it, he and his castle were sucked into the Majigen, the pocket dimension created by Jedah Dohma.

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• Adaptation Origin Connection: The animated series made him Hsien-Ko's arch-enemy, as his murder of her family, including Mei-Ling, caused Hsien-Ko to become a Dark Hunter and she vowed to end his life, rather than her mother sacrificing herself to save their land from the Darkstalkers.
• Animal Motifs: Bats, naturally, as per the traditional vampire association. His intro animation shows him transforming from a bat, Anakaris's Royal Judgement transforms him into a bat with an ascot, his Demon Blast and Demon Billion supers summon swarms of fiery bats, and the Darkstalkers 3 version of his Chaos Flare special launches a bat enveloped in a fireball. SNK vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos and Capcom's own 'Darkstalkers Are Not Dead' trailer both depict him materializing from a converging swarm of bats.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: He's a Romanian noble, as well as a member of the high nobility of the demon realm, and amongst the most dangerous, unambiguously evil characters in the series.
• Attack Drone: His Dark Side Master move produces two fire bats that attack the opponent remotely.
• Attractive Bent-Gender: Midnight Bliss, his infamous super move in which he glides towards the opponent with a rose — "Come on, baby" — transforms them into a genderbent counterpart (male characters) or a cute alternative version (females) before draining them of blood and contemptuously tossing their shrivelled corpse aside.
• Badass Arm-Fold: While gliding over the ground as he performs a dash, or attempts a Midnight Pleasure.
• Badass Cape: With which he uses the whap the opponent in some moves, and transforms into actual wings for some super moves.
• Battle Aura: His body is permanently surrounded by a roiling flame effect, which is used to protect him from sunlight when fighting out of doors.
• Blood Knight: Combat and seduction are the only amusements of his endless life.
• Cape Wings: His cape corresponds to the bat-like wings of his true form. The wings alone are revealed and used during certain attacks, such as Demon Cradle and Negative Stolen.
• Classical Movie Vampire: He sports Old-fashioned European clothing, a dramatic flowing cape, slicked back hair complete with widow's peak, and red eyes. His overall outfit is basically Classical Movie Vampire meets a comic book Super Hero. The American cartoon takes this even further, giving him a Romanian accent and Dracula-style fangs.
• Cloak of Defense: Demitri uses his cape to guard from attacks.
• Crucified Hero Shot: A dark take; for Demitri's jumping fierce punch, he assumes a Christ-like, crucified position, held tilted to one side, hitting the opponent with his outstretched arm.
• Dark Is Evil: A malevolent and arrogant vampire, who wants to take over the demon world and sees everyone around him as food or toys.
• The Dandy: Prides himself on his fashion, and he looks impeccably handsome no matter where he goes.
• Depending on the Artist: Pretty much everything about Demitri's appearance from the neck up varies greatly from depiction to depiction. His eyes can be relatively normal-looking with red irises or pupils or they can be completely red or completely white, he may or may not have Creepy Shadowed Undereyes, his facial features may be fairly soft or they may be craggy and angular, and his hair can be anything from a smooth, teardrop-shaped sweep back to a single point to a vertically-standing crown of spikes, with or without a prominent widow's peak. And this is all within official art.
• The Dragon: To Pyron in the American cartoon.
• Embarrassing Nickname: In games where he and Morrigan appear together (such as Project × Zone), Morrigan refers to him as "Demi-Demi." He sometimes gets furious about it, but more often he'll half-heartedly grumble, "Stop calling me that!", otherwise letting it slide.
• Evil Duo: He and Morrigan are this in the American cartoon.
• Evil Sounds Deep: He has a particularly deep voice in the OVA, and in the games when launching his specials.
• Fangs Are Evil: In the U.S. cartoon. In the rest of the franchise, he instead has a whole mouth of sharp teeth.
• First Law of Gender Bending: His Midnight Bliss attack will turn men into women and give women a sexier/cuter makeover (with the exceptions of Hisen-ko and Mei-Ling, who are forcibly turned back into humans, and Morrigan and Lilith, who morph into a giant Super-Deformed doll and a little kid in baggy pajamas respectively). In some games outside the series proper, it can be hard to tell the difference.
• Final Boss: He's Jedah's final boss in Vampire Savior, challenging him over Makai's future.
• Flash Step: Has Akuma-style dashes that make him disappear for a while.
• Form-Fitting Wardrobe: His Romanian nobleman getup fits tight enough to show off every one of his rippling muscles. Likely because the demonic form that occasionally shows through is his true form and the more human-like form is merely an illusion.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: His gargoyle-like true form shows through for a split second during many of his animations.
• Gender Bender: Midnight Bliss, but only for males. It's removed in the Project X Zone games, as none of the enemies in the game are transformed — likely due to the extra work which would have gone into making new sprites for their alternate states.
• Heroic Build: Vampires of either gender are usually depicted as slim, even gaunt. Not Demitri; he's built like Superman.
• Inconsistent Spelling:
  • Demitri, Dimitri, or Dimitry? Even at this wiki, we have the same problem. The ROM of the first game even has "Demitori", his Japanese romanization and the tiles even had to be overlapped to conceal the "o" due to development time constraints. To muddle things further, in Romanian, it's either spelt "Dimitrie" or "Dumitru".
  • His surname isn't safe either: it's officially Maximoff, but SNK vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos had it spelled "Maximov."
• Jack of All Stats: Along with Morrigan, he is considered to be a very well-rounded character, with both of them focusing a lot on fundamentals and solid pokes. They are also Shotoclones.
• Killed Off for Real: In a drama CD based on Vampire Savior, it's implied Jedah killed him.
• Leitmotif: His theme is one of the very few to be re-used in all the series’ instalments, along with Morrigan's and Donovan's. It’s also played in the last part of his ending in Vampire Savior.
• Magic Missile Storm: His Demon Blast EX special unleashes a swarm of fiery bats that fly across the screen.
• Man of Wealth and Taste: As per his upbringing and social status as a Romanian aristocrat — and a vampire.
• More Teeth than the Osmond Family: To make it worse, they are all disgustingly rotten. Although, not in the cartoon.
• The Night That Never Ends: He causes this in the OVA. Then comes Pyron...
• Picky Eater: He only feeds on beautiful women. Fortunately, he has his Midnight Bliss super, rendering any character a beautiful (or more beautiful) version of themselves.
• Playing with Fire: Chaos Flare, roughly on par with Pyron's heat when Demitri is at full power, storyline-wise anyway.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Especially apparent in his endings, which feature close ups of his scowling or fang-baring face, red eyes wide open.
• Shoryuken: Demon Cradle, an attack in which he leaps upward while spinning, his arms crossed and cape transformed into a pair of bat wings. When used from a standstill, he goes straight up, but when used during a dash, he leaps forward at an angle.
• Shotoclone: Downplayed; he has the requisite projectile and uppercut. Lacks a Hurricane Kick but does have Akuma-style dodges and special grapples. He still exemplifies the Jack of All Stats nature of the archetype.
• Shout-Out: Between the hair, the blue tights, the Battle Aura, and the high born pride, there is a fair chance Demitri was influenced by Vegeta. Before they changed it, the Chaos Flare had the same posing from start to finish as the Final Flash, popularized as a signature move in Dragon Ball's own side content. The gargoyle monster Demitri shifts in and out of shares its pupiless red eyes, jagged teeth, and pointy ears while retaining the distinct hairdo with Vegeta's Oozaru form. Some of those monster traits have also leaked into Demitri's regular look.
• Slasher Smile: He sports one in the OVA in a few scenes.
• Smug Super: Demitri looks down on everyone, human and Darkstalkers alike. Only a handful of the characters have his respect (Morrigan being one of them).
• Spectacular Spinning: Demon Cradle, Bat Spin, Negative Stolen... much of Demitri's repertoire involves spinning.
• Supporting Protagonist: He's the original designated main character of the series, according to Capcom, though he has very little character development, doesn't really get to do anything that substantial in the grand scheme of things, and largely serves as an anchor for Morrigan.
• Tall, Dark, and Handsome: Very tall at 6'6", dark featured (and in personality) and, when he wants to be, broodingly handsome.
• Vampires Are Rich: His enormous, elaborately decorated castle, Zeltzereich, is located in the Carpathian mountains and forms his stage in all of his appearances. As well as being a Romanian noble, he also belongs to one of Makai's preeminent noble houses.
• Vampires Are Sex Gods: As evidenced by his positively enormous harem of adoring woman, who languish about in the background of his stage, cheering him on.
• Vampire's Harem: He is accompanied by a collection of concubines he has gathered over the years, some of whom appear in the background of his stage, and bow respectfully to him in one of his win-poses. They even have official names; Patricia, Elizabeth, Francoise and Angelica.
• Villain Protagonist: Cruel, sadistic, arrogant, domineering, and officially the true main protagonist of the series.
• Winged Humanoid: His demonic form.
• Worthy Opponent: He finds one in Baraba Kreutz, the leader of the royal guardsmen of the Makai's Kreutz clan (as well as Jon Talbain's father). Demitri is said to have seen a certain beauty in his fighting style, even saying "He is my best rival in my life."
• Your Soul Is Mine!: The Demitri VS Belial short story published in Gamest states that Demitri was actually able to succeed in what Jedah had died trying to do: boosting his power by absorbing souls from the portal to the human world. How did he manage to avoid Phlebotinum Overload? He absorbed them little by little over time, rather than trying to absorb a whole load at once. This actually augmented his power enough that he became a serious threat to Belial, but it ended up backfiring on him when Belial tore away the part of Makai containing the portal and Demitri's castle and flung it back into the human realm.

Felicia

Dreaming Cat Girl

You've lost to the rest, now you've lost to the best!

Class: Catwoman
Origin: United States, 1967
Voiced by: ^note Kae Araki (games), Lisa Ann Beley (Western cartoon), Yukana (Vampire Hunter OVA, Japanese), Janyse Jaud (Night Warriors OVA, English), Melissa Fahn (Cross Edge, English), Kana Asumi (Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Japanese), G.K. Bowes (Marvel vs. Capcom 3, English), Cristina Valenzuela (High Score Girl, English)

Felicia was raised in an orphanage by a nun named Rose (not that one). After Rose passed away, Felicia decided to make a name for herself in show business and left town. Meeting other cat-women along the way, they started a musical group which was a smash hit.

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• Amazonian Beauty: Zig-zagged, varying from artist to artist. Her physique ranges from a body type akin to Morrigan's svelteness, to that of a gymnast/olympic swimmer, to even that of a bodybuilder, but she always remains gorgeous, cute and appealing.
• Animal Motifs: Cats, naturally — as well as turning into an actual cat, her special moves are all cat-inspired (scratches, rolls etc) and her stage in Vampire and Night Warriors features a giant Maneki Neko in the background.
• Anime Chinese Girl: She dresses as one in her Pocket Fighter ending, in which she is inadvertently cast in a kung-fu movie by Ken.
• Anthropomorphic Shift: When comparing her older official art◊ to more recent art and in-game images, she has become increasingly softer, cuter, and less primal looking.
• Assist Character: The catgirls who appear in her "Please Help Me!" special. They each even have names, US home states, and a couple of sentences worth of backstory.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Even if she's just won a fight that took her to within an inch of her life, she can't help but chase any butterflies or mice that happen to show up.
• Badass Adorable: Although the exact ratio of badass to adorable fluctuates, she's always got plenty of both.
• Bathing Beauty: Her ending, in which she enjoys a long, hot soak in a bubble bath.
• Bathtub Scene: Her ending in Darkstalkers and Night Warriors features her taking a well-deserved bubble bath, despite her feline nature being seemingly at odds with relaxing in this way.
• Battle Aura:
  • During Rolling Buckler, Rolling Scratch, and Tumble Cat (kick throw) she has a green aura visible. If using an alternate palette, the color of this aura will change to match her eye color.
  • For her EX Charge move, she crouches and emits a battle aura, which manually fills up her Hyper Gauge.
• Beast Man: Her earlier concept designs were more muscular, longer of tooth and fang, and generally more monstrous.
• Beauty Equals Goodness: A beautiful catwoman, and the kindest of the cast, exhibiting no real malice.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: In the manhua adaptation, Felicia pledges Undying Loyalty to Demitri after he saves her from being held captive in a circus.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Just because she chose a pacifistic lifestyle, and just because her motto is always turning the other cheek, it doesn't means that she can't punch your head off, or scratch you into ribbons if you piss her off enough.
• Big Damn Heroes: Felicia's "Please Help Me!" super. If Felicia is in trouble, her Cat Girl friends will jump in and beat the crap out of her opponent.
• Boisterous Bruiser: She's very upbeat and jolly, and fights in a very physical, athletic manner when compared to some of the series' other characters, who are more composed and sedentary, letting their magic powers do the talking.
• Boobs-and-Butt Pose: Her victory portrait in Vampire Savior, which in turn was made into a win pose in MvC2.
• Bowdlerise: Her promo art for Resurrection, pictured above, is an alternate version of her concept art that covers her underboobs and her butt with her hair and an image of her cat form, respectively.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: One of her win quotes, wherein she talks about how she starred in Darkstalkers, Night Warriors, and Puzzle Fighter.
• Breakout Character: In Darkstalkers and Night Warriors, Felicia was just another monster whose story and purpose had little regard to the main plot. However, fans (perhaps inevitably) latched on to her kind personality and attractive appearance. Alongside Morrigan, Felicia's popularity with fans led to her being included in tons of spin-off and crossover games.
• Cat Folk: She's far from the only one of her kind — one of her attacks has her calling in her fellow catwomen for backup.
• Cat Girl: The most prominent example in the Fighting Game genre. Felicia acts as a Lead You Can Relate To in her role as the must-have American character, and unlike most of the other characters, who are based on ancient European and Asian folktales, she's inspired by classic American B-movie horror films, most prominently Cat People and its various remakes.
• Cool Big Sis: In her Darkstalkers 3 ending, Felicia becomes a nun and founds the orphanage "Felicity House," and all of the children there look up to her.
• Cosplay: Played for laughs but with a more adult tone in the 1996 manga version, where Jon Talbain and Felicia share a tiny apartment, with Jon posing as a plain (and antisocial) human, while Felicia stays in her cute kitty form to avoid attracting unwanted attention. One of their neighbors casually sees Felicia in her normal form, but she assumes Felicia is just an ordinary woman wearing a sexy cat costume, visiting Jon for some fetish sex.
• Cute Little Fangs: In more recent iterations of the series and accompanying, her fangs are small and enhance her cuteness when she smiles, though in some older artworks◊, she appears far more bestial.
• Dance Battler: Felicia's both a fighter and a Vegas showgirl with acrobatic movements to match.
• Exposed to the Elements: Felicia can fight anywhere in her Fur Bikini, be it in the hot depths of the Makai, or the arctic regions of Canada or Japan.
• Fanservice: Felicia's entire race is made up of nothing but females (Capcom confirms this) who romp around naked all the time and, on top of that, are playful, open-minded beings who consider humans to be an interesting race, as opposed to an annoyance (or in some cases, a food source), as the other Darkstalkers typically do. Capcom has also said that whenever a Catwoman and a male of whatever species mate, the offspring is always a catgirl. That still doesn't explains the origin of Felicia's race, but it helps a little.
• Failed Attempt at Drama: Some of her victory poses involve Felicia attempting to strike a dramatic stance, and after a couple of seconds bursting into laughter, getting distracted by moving objects, or having the moment ruined by one of her kitty helpers photobombing out from nowhere.
• Friend to All Children: Felicia loves children and wishes to take care of those who cannot defend themselves. In the UDON comic, she brings Jon Talbain to the orphanage she grew up in, and the children there were more than happy to see her.
• Full-Frontal Assault: Technically, since her only "clothing" is her natural fur.
• Fur Bikini: In the American cartoon. In everything else, she has nothing but her own naturally-grown fur barely covering certain parts.
• Genki Girl: Her eccentricities sometimes approach Cloudcuckoolander levels.
• Gorgeous Gaijin: She's American and has the largest bust and hips of the Darkstalkers ladies.
• A Handful for an Eye: One of her specials, the brilliantly-named "Litterbox Kick", involves kicking ki-infused sand at her opponent.
• Head Pet: She can actually jump on top of her opponent's head and they'll go into an idle pose.
• Hellish Pupils: Her earlier appearances emphasized her vertical cat's pupils in addition to her mouth full of fangs. Although her eyes in her later designs look mostly human, she does still have cat's pupils.
• Idol Singer: What she aspires to be... or more specifically, her goal was to be the Western equivalent of it; a superstar Las Vegas diva.
• Impossible Hourglass Figure: She and Morrigan are the prime examples of this.
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: The sole Darkstalker with pure good in her heart.
• Innocent Fanservice Girl: Unlike Morrigan, Felicia seems completely unaware of her own talent for sex appeal, and isn't in the least bit intentionally suggestive in her mannerisms or quotes.
• Jiggle Physics: It's hard to notice at first, but she does indeed have very large breasts (officially the largest in the series) and hers are the only ones that bounce.
• Kick Them While They Are Down: She has a unique pursuit attack in Vampire Savior called "Toy Touch" where she attacks the downed opponent not with her claws, despite appearances, but a toy mouse. If she has meter, the ES version does more hits and damage. It was made into a command normal in Marvel vs. Capcom 3.
• Killer Rabbit: In one of her supers, "Please Help Me!", Felicia calls for help, and four other catwomen (Pico, Alto, Grace, and Lucy) come to her aid, utterly wrecking the opponent for messing with Felicia.
• Kill It with Fire: In the OVA, a group of Dark Hunters try to immolate her while she's incapacitated. Fortunately for her, Lord Raptor takes offense at this and saves her life by CurbStomping the Dark Hunters and devouring their souls.
• Kindhearted Cat Lover: Considering she's a catwoman, and can turn into a cat, she of course enjoys feline company.
• Little Bit Beastly: She's a human with cat ears, a tail, and hands and feet somewhere in between the two. If you look closely, she's usually depicted with a cat's slit-shaped eye pupils.
• Long Hair Is Feminine: Felicia sports vast, bouffant blue hair that reaches past her waist, and encircles her whenever she flip jumps or does her Rolling Buckler. Its general shape is also reminiscent of a lion's mane, which adds to her feline image.
• Martial Pacifist: Felicia isn't as blood-thirsty as the rest of the cast, but that doesn't mean she can't put up a hard fight.
• Meaningful Name: Felicia (and male name counterpart Felix) means happiness. Fits well for Felicia since she wishes to coexist with humans in peace. There's also the obvious similarity with "feline," too.
• More Teeth than the Osmond Family: In pre-Savior◊ official◊ art.◊
• Ms. Fanservice: Competes with Morrigan. Felicia is very attractive by human standards with her slim, sometimes muscular physique and white fur being very revealing. Unlike Morrigan, a succubus who is the embodiment of lust, Felicia is actually naked... all the time.
• Natural Weapon: Those claws of hers aren't just for show, and she deploys some blood-spattering tearing attacks.
• Naughty Nuns: Felicia was raised in a nunnery and returns there in some medias and endings, although you wouldn't know it from her attire.
• Navel-Deep Neckline: Very easy when her fur stripes barely even qualify as coverage.
• Nice Girl: Felicia is definitely the kindest of the entire cast, only wishing for peaceful co-existence between Darkstalkers and humans. That doesn't mean she can't kick your ass if you push her too far.
• Non-Malicious Monster: Felicia's species is one of the few that are accepted by humans, mostly because she has tried her best to stay in the public spotlight her entire life as a performer. Her goal is peaceful coexistence with them, not just for Cat Women, but for all Darkstalkers.
• Not So Above It All: Her win quotes show that she's not above taunting her opponents.
• Nuns Are Funny: She becomes a nun in her ending in the third game, just like her foster parent Rose, and looks very cute and amusing in her nun's habit.
• One-Gender Race: The Catwoman race. They're able to reproduce with humans (and have been given rights like ordinary human citizens), but the offspring is always another catgirl.
• Organic Bra: Felicia's fur covers her nipples for her.
• Perpetual Smiler: The cheeriest of the cast, which is in stark contrast to the dark setting.
• Prefers Going Barefoot: As was shown in the UDON comic, the size and volume of Felicia's feet make wearing shoes a painful and uncomfortable experience for her. This seems to be why she prefers going barefoot.
• Prehensile Tail: Felicia can use her tail to whip her opponents, or use it to hold her whole body up from her standing hard kick.
• Progressively Prettier: It would be a stretch to say Felicia was ever anything other than pretty, but over the years her teeth and claws have become less prominent while her cutesy fanserviceyness has been played up.
• Sexy Backless Outfit: As with the rest of her body, Felicia's back is completely bare (she is technically naked and her butt is always fully exposed).
• Sexy Cat Person: She's a cute Cat Girl who wears nothing save her own natural fur. It's no surprise she's one of the biggest MsFanservices in the game.
• She-Fu: Combines fighting with her natural cat-grace and flexibility.
• Ship Tease: She seems to be involved a lot with Talbain—in the UDON comic, official manga adaptations and the OVA.
• Shout-Out:
  • Her Midnight Bliss form is a direct tribute to Marilyn Monroe's eponymous, skirt-fluttering Marilyn Maneuver from The Seven Year Itch.
  • In her Darkstalkers 3 ending, the children at the orphanage ask her to sing a song. Felicia complies and begins with the words "Happy! Happy! Joy! Joy!"
  • "I hope I can have Blanka for my leading man!"
  • The building seen at the beginning of her Darkstalkers/Night Warriors ending sequence is blatantly modeled after Biff's Pleasure Paradise from Back to the Future Part II.
  • Why is Felicia raised by nuns, and becomes a nun in her ending of the third game where she runs an orphanage? It could be a nod to the Felician Sisters, a religious order named for a shrine of St. Felix, a 16th century saint especially devoted to children.
• Sideboob: Unavoidable, seeing as how her breasts are covered by a single strip of fur that's technically part of her body.
• Sleep-Mode Size: Her intro, as well as both the cartoon and OVA, and one of her winposes, show Felicia having the ability to transform into a regular cat.
• Sleeps in the Nude: Felicia is technically naked. Her draw game animation has her curl up and sleep (as well as her win pose in Puzzle Fighter).
• Spectacular Spinning: Felicia's Rolling Buckler, Hellcat throw, Dancing Flash — she's constantly spinning whenever she jumps.
• Stripperiffic: Her thin fur stripes barely cover her private parts, and her butt is always exposed.
• Suddenly Voiced: In both Darkstalkers and Night Warriors, Felicia is almost totally silent and has no voice work whatsoever; she doesn't call any of her specials, and doesn't make a sound when hit, or even any Kiai sound when attacking with her normals (as every other character does, which is odd). All she has is a death cry, and a little 'meow' when in cat-form for her winpose. However, come Darkstalkers 3, Felicia has a slew of new recorded attack/hit sounds, special move calls, and general chatter.
• Thong of Shielding: Present on her sprites (she has a barely-visible triangle of fur right over her butt, and some sprites make it look like she goes completely bare-assed), as well as on her Marvel vs. Capcom 3 model, if you look hard enough.
• Token Good Teammate: The most unambiguously good character in the series.
• Underboobs: Some of her animation frames (such as her vertical kick) include this, purposely hiding her fur stripes.
• Vapor Wear: Felicia is, in fact, naked at all times, as her 'Fur Bikini' is her own natural fur.
• Viva Las Vegas!: Although it's never stated outright, the look of her home stage and ending sequence in the first two games certainly imply that she is from Las Vegas, or a facsimile thereof.
• Walking Swimsuit Scene: She walks about everywhere in her Fur Bikini, made up of her own naturally-occuring body hair.
• Wall Jump: In Night Warriors, she gained the ability to do a standard Chun-Li style wall jump. But in Vampire Savior, it gained a bit of a twist: she became able to jump off of or cling to walls, but if she stays put for too long, she'll slide back down in typical cat fashion.
• Wrestler in All of Us: In Namco × Capcom, Felicia is paired with Tekken's King. One of their tag supers (the terminology there being Multiple Assault) is a double Shining Wizard. In Pocket Fighter, one of her special grab moves is a Spinning Piledriver.

Jon Talbain / Gallon

Werewolf of the Gale

You have felt the fury of the beast! Go and lick your wounds!

Class: Werewolf
Origin: England (United Kingdom), 1940
Voiced by: ^note Yuji Ueda (games), Fumihiko Tachiki (Night Warriors OVA, Japanese), Alvin Sanders (Night Warriors OVA, English), Lee Tockar (Western cartoon)

Jonathan Talbain was an orphan living peacefully in England until the night of the full moon, when he experienced his first transformation. He was quickly outcast from society. Thinking that in order to control his inner beast he must control his body, he subjected himself to intense Training from Hell.

With the creation of the Majigen, his soul was sucked in, and the beast he had tried for so long to control had resurfaced. In his ending, Talbain comes face-to-face with his dark self, and concluding that he can't suppress the beast any longer, goes for another session of Training from Hell.

His Japanese name is actually pronounced "garou," as in the Japanese word for "hungry wolf," as opposed to "gallon," as in "ten-gallon hat."

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• Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: He has blue fur, though exactly how blue varies depending on the depiction. In-game, it's closer to gray.
• Anime Hair: In his human form, he has a bluish-white mane shaped a bit like Sonic's bristles.
• Ascended Extra: Despite only being a minor character, comic and manga adaptations tend to have chapters dedicated to him, most of which expand on his backstory. A peculiar example would be the Maleficarum manga, which reveals that he first met Morrigan in a dream as a child, suggesting that this had awakened the beast within him. He's also one of the main characters in Street Fighter vs. Darkstalkers.
• Balloon Belly: When on the receiving end of Jedah's Sangue Passare (Bloody Passing), his belly-button expands before exploding.
• Battle Strip: Whenever he transforms into his werewolf form, as seen in his pre-fight animation.
• Bilingual Bonus: "Gallon" comes from "Garou", Japanese for "Hungry Wolf".
• Bruce Lee Clone: He whips out nunchaku for some of his attacks and has a similar body type to Fei Long in his human form. Additionally, he has similar kicks, a variation of the one-inch punch, a dragon-themed technique, and howls which sound an awful lot like Bruce's famous high-pitched yells. In short, if Bruce Lee became a werewolf, he'd be Jon Talbain.
• Cool Old Guy: He was born in 1940. For a guy his age, Jon looks curiously youthful and attractive, and can dish out serious damage. Even in his human form, he looks like a man in his late 20s to early 30s. This may be due to his demonic, werewolf heritage.
• Cursed with Awesome: Pinballing between Blessed with Suck when his werewolf form gets out of control.
• Divergent Character Evolution: Talbain is a rather underdeveloped character in the original Darkstalkers game. His moveset lacks variety, his trademark Beast Cannon is only available as a super (and in its place as a special is the nearly-useless Beast Rush), and even visually he doesn't quite stack up to the other characters, with many of his normal attacks looking identical in a game otherwise full of visual variety. Reception from players was lukewarm as a result. He is greatly improved in Night Warriors with some newly-animated normal attacks, the introduction of Beast Cannon as a special, the addition of nunchucks for some kung-fu flair, and two cool new supers in Mirage Body and Dragon Cannon. He became a much more interesting and popular character as a result.
• Dub Name Change: Gallon in Japan, Jon Talbain everywhere else.
• Female Feline, Male Mutt: With Felicia, the in-series Cat Girl.
• Final Boss: His evil side, which appears in the third game as a flickering palette swapped version with Talbain's moveset from the first game. This version has been unofficially named "Dark Talbain" or "Shadow Gallon" by fans.
• Friend to All Children: He takes two children under his wing in Vampire Savior. It's his concern for them that causes Jon to abandon the chance to reunite with his Disappeared Dad, Baraba, in his ending.
• Half-Human Hybrid: The son of a human mother and the leader of the royal guardsmen of the Kreutz family (one of the seven noble families of Makai). In his Darkstalkers 3/Vampire Savior ending, Jon runs into a man believed to be his father, but passes up on the chance to meet him and instead returns to take care of two children he encountered during his journey.
• Inconsistent Spelling: His given name is sometimes misspelled as John, while many others tend to accidentally misplace the "i" in his surname (i.e. Taliban as opposed to Talbain).
• Ineffectual Loner: Having lived in isolation for most of his life, Jon believes that solitude suits him the best.
• Involuntary Shapeshifter: At first. He gets better, thanks to Training from Hell, via which he learns to control his transforming nature.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He tends to be a loner and dislikes humanity in general for their narrow-mindedness concerning Darkstalkers, but after spending time with the Genki Girl Felicia, he slowly warms up and changes his viewpoints.
• Ki Manipulation: His feet glow during his Laser Climb attack and his Beast Cannon uses ki to fire himself forward surrounded by burning energy. His Dragon Cannon super is a full-screen blast while he holds his nunchaku to concentrate.
• Little Bit Beastly: His Midnight Bliss form — a cute wolf-girl in a yukata.
• Meaningful Name: His Japanese name Gallon (or more accurately Garon) translates to "hungry wolf."
• Not Quite Flight: His beast cannon can be chained around to improve his aerial maneuverability or rack up combo hits.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: Quick and lithe martial artist werewolves are not too uncommon (see: the werewolves in the Castlevania series, Valkenhayn in BlazBlue), nor is the ability to change shape at will, but being born a werewolf due to one's father being a wolf demon related to a dragon from Makai? That's original.
• Noble Wolf: His inner wolf is a Savage Wolf. After undergoing Training from Hell, he manages to achieve some control over his wolf form, and becomes a more dignified, composed being.
• Punny Name: Gallon is similar to the French, 'loup-garou', meaning werewolf.
• Ship Tease: He and Felicia are often depicted together in fan art with romantic overtones, as well as in various comic adaptations.
• Sir Cameos-a-Lot: Though he has yet to make a playable appearance in a Capcom Crossover Game, he has made more than a few cameos in them. Including Capcom Fighting Evolution, Puzzle Fighter and Teppen.
• Training from Hell: He subjected himself to literal training from hell in order to control his werewolf transformations. Except when under a full moon, his efforts have been successful.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: Is very rarely seen wearing a shirt, even when he's in his human form.
• Wolf Man: The series' very own take on the literary and cinematic classic monster, in the same way that Demitri stands in for Dracula.

Bishamon

Cursed Warrior

There is no dishonor in falling before me. It is only natural.

Class: Demon Samurai
Origin: Tokugawa Shogunate, 1673 (present-day Japan)
Bishamon voiced by: ^note Kan Tokumaru (games), Masashi Ebara (Vampire Hunter OVA, Japanese), Kenta Miyake (High Score Girl, Japanese), Colin Murdock (Western cartoon), Don Brown (Night Warriors OVA, English), Kyle McCarley (High Score Girl, English)
Hannya voiced by: ^note Shōzō Iizuka (Vampire Hunter OVA, Japanese), Michael Dobson (Night Warriors OVA, English)

In Feudal Japan, he came upon a cursed armor called Hannya and a forbidden sword called Kien in his friend's antique shop. After blacking out, the next thing he realizes, he's back at home. After some questioning, he finds out that he forcefully took the set from the shop owner, but he doesn't remember, nor has any idea why he did it. For several weeks, Bishamon just stared at the armor, as if in a trance, despite concerns from his wife. Then one day he donned the armor, and all hell broke loose. The armor possessed him, and started a massacre that continued for days. When Pyron came to Earth, the energies produced by him overloaded the armor and Bishamon was set free. Vowing to prevent Hannya from taking more lives, he hides the armor and the sword, and he and his wife become monks.

During the events of Darkstalkers 3, Hannya and Kien were sucked into the Majigen, where the overflowing spirit energies allowed Hannya to manifest itself once again. It took the form of Bishamon, as the armor had become accustomed to that form, but before it could begin another massacre, the real Bishamon sealed it away.

He has an alternate form in Darkstalkers 3 called "Oboro Bishamon," which is what would have happened if Bishamon had mastered controlling the cursed armor, and fights you as a Secret Final Boss if you get enough super finishes and perfects.

---

• Adaptational Villainy: In the cartoon, though he is basically an Anti-Villain who eventually pulls a Heel–Face Turn (which, conversely, is Adaptational Heroism with regards to Hannya and Kien).
• And I Must Scream: It's implied that Bishamon has full knowledge of the atrocities he committed while under the influence of Hannya and Kien (the OVA suggests this further in a moment where he seems to come back into control long enough to desperately ask Donovan if he wants to take his soul).
• Animated Armor: In Vampire Savior, Hannya forms a spirit version of the original Bishamon.
• Ascended Glitch: Super Street Fighter II Turbo has a glitch involving two super moves that were activated with the "Charge back, forward, back, forward + Button" command. The last forward could be held for an indefinite amount of time, and the subsequent button press would still activate the super allowing for "walk up supers." In the first Darkstalkers game, Bishamon's "Kassabaki" super uses this same command, and at the moment the last forward is input, Bishamon automatically starts walking forward for one second. At any time during this second, the super can come out with a single button press, imitating the "walk up super" technique that's possible in Super Turbo.
• The Atoner: He became a monk alongside his wife O-rin after being freed from the haunted armor following Pyron's death, atoning for his actions while under the control of Hannya and Kien. He started a practice known as Roppoudou in order to cleanse his mind, and later ventures to seal away his now-Animated Armor to prevent anyone from experiencing the pain he went through.
• Belly Mouth: His armor has a face on the chestplate that writhes about menacingly and cackles in one of his win-poses.
• Blood Knight: His armor, Hannya, is a jealous, hate-filled demon, while his sword Kien craves for blood.
• Canine Companion: Taro. Originally a mere background element in Bishamon's Darkstalkers/Night Warriors stage, the developers themselves have acknowledged that this dancing Shiba Inu became something of a Breakout Character who eventually found his way into illustrations and was carried over to the Abaraya stage of Vampire Savior.
• Cool Helmet: With a molded face meant to intimidate.
• Death from Above: He can force his opponent to lay prone on a wooden rack, sending a succession of martial-arts style blocks down on top of them.
• Doppelgänger Attack: In one of his super moves, he turns into a ghostly figure and creates several more duplicates, who all slash the enemy in a cascading attack.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: In the OVA, when Donovan puts himself at risk to save human bystanders during their fight, Bishamon is shocked by such a virtuous action. Furthermore, when Donovan reveals that he uses his dark powers to destroy evil, Bishamon is unable to comprehend this to the point of degenerating into an insane screaming rage.
• Giant Hands of Doom: His Oni Kubi Hineri attack creates a giant phantom hand to burst from his armor's 'mouth' that grabs the opponent and squeezes the life out of them.
• Hitodama Light: Bishamon is accompanied by two balls of flame; not only do they symbolize his own possession by the cursed armor, but he can dispatch them as an attack to temporarily "possess" (paralyze) an opponent.
• Hungry Weapon: Due to a ritual used to keep the blade eternally sharp while crafting it, his Kien hungers for death and destruction.
• Katanas Are Just Better: He only uses one kick and one punch (at close range). All of his other attacks are sword slashes.
• Meaningful Name: His name is derived from Bishamonten, the Japanese god of war.
• Psychic-Assisted Suicide: For one of his specials, he forces his opponent to commit seppuku with his sword. It only sticks if used as a Finishing Move.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Only on his armor though. Amusingly, his sprite's eyes were re-colored from red to white in Vampire Savior, presumably to make them stand out better from his red helmet.
• Samurai: A very dark example. He's a previously good man who became possessed by a suit of evil samurai armor and a Hungry Weapon.
• Shoryuken: Kienzan, a leaping upward sword slash. Unique in that it cannot be used at just any time; it only comes out as a guard cancel, a reversal, or right after landing from a jump. Oboro Bishamon can perform the move independently.
• Shout-Out: To various Go Nagai-isms. The armor looks like something in between a Mazinger Z and Devilman badguy, his human self has Hot Blooded Sideburns, his genderbent Midnight Bliss form is based on Yukiko-hime, and when his Enma Seki EX move is used on Morrigan, she wears a mask bearing a resemblance to the heroine Kekko Kamen.
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: One of his special moves in the first two games involves throwing his katana at the opponent. He can then call the sword back to his hand and pull the opponent along with it.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: Bishamon has been shown to hang out with a pair of young sisters in a small igloo built outside a house in a rural Japanese village, which features as his stage in the first two games. He'll venture out of the igloo to fight any other monsters that come along, but no sign of animosity between him and these girls exists, and in fact one of them seems to cheer him on as he fights. The developers themselves didn't give a particularly clear answer when asked about this seemingly uncharacteristic bond, but it could be assumed that one thing that Bishamon's will is simply too strong to be driven to do is the slaughter of innocent children. B.B. Hood, of course, is another story.

Anakaris

Resurrected Pharaoh

The power of Pharaoh Anakaris is as eternal as the desert sands!

Class: Mummy
Origin: Old Kingdom of Egypt, 2664 B.C.
Voiced by: ^note Kan Tokumaru (games) Scott McNeil (Western cartoon)

The former ruler of an Egyptian empire. Foreseeing his death, he orders his servants to build a pyramid that will resurrect himself. One year later after the pyramid was completed, the empire was invaded and Anakaris was killed in battle. His body was placed in the pyramid's chamber of revival as instructed.

Thousands of years later, Pyron's visit awakens Anakaris from his long slumber. He fights Pyron to restore his powers and using time-travel he goes back to his time, one year after his death, to resurrect himself and beat back the invaders. He succeeds and conquers them.

Some time later, he hears a voice from the future. Deciding to check it out, he travels there and enters Jedah's Majigen, where he learns that the destruction of his empire is unavoidable. He travels back, and the empire is erased from history, when in reality Anakaris transfers his entire empire into another dimension located somewhere under the Earth, to avoid wars above ground.

---

• Adaptational Dumbass: It's probably meant to be a play on how the brain is removed from the body prior to mummification, but the American cartoon depicts him as a rambling buffoon.
• Adaptational Villainy: In the cartoon, he's one of the more villainous Darkstalkers, as opposed to only being fixated on saving his kingdom, as per his in-game persona.
• Ancient Egypt: Hails from an ancient Egyptian empire that was conquered and later "erased" from history.
• Animal Motifs: Snakes — as seen in his Cobra Blow attack, where his face and arms morph into a serpentine shape.
• Assist Character: Khaibit, the toothy-grinned restligeist who appears in several of Anakaris's attacks and animations. He also has a harem of mummy girls who help him in one of his Super Combos.
• Benevolent Mage Ruler: To his people, who treat him with total reverence.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: In one of his victory quotes from Vampire Savior, he delivers the following line:
  This is the worst strategy I've seen! Go buy an official book!
• Catch and Return: He can swallow and shoot back his opponents' fireball attacks. In the first game, it is literally a simple Catch and Return; a single projectile can be caught and fired back. However in every subsequent game it ventures into Power Copying territory; upon catching a projectile, Anakaris can "learn" how to use it and can fire back as many as he wants until either the round ends or it's overwritten by catching a different projectile.
• Detachment Combat: One of his specials allows him to attack with his top half disengaging from the waist up and flying at the opponent, while his legs carry on walking and kicking. Also, one of his counter attacks involves him splitting in half to catch out any opponent who tries to hit him with a pursuit attack after he's been knocked down.
• Difficult, but Awesome: One of the series' most expert characters, his bizarre standard hits, ability to float and triple jump add to his overall complexity.
• Fire, Ice, Lightning: His Pharaoh Magic EX special manages to combine all three of these into one attack.
• Forced Transformation: His Royal Judgement and Pharaoh's Curse Super Combos temporarily transforms his opponents into small, defenseless forms in keeping with their usual forms (a bat for Demitri, a panda for Lei-Lei, a snowman for Sasquatch, for example). Due to Marvel vs. Capcom 2's large roster, all members of the cast are instead turned into the same generic troll creature upon being hit.
• Giant Foot of Stomping: He has a summoning attack that crashes a sarcophagus down onto the opponent, spaced according to the strength of the button pressed.
• God-Emperor: All Pharaohs were thought of as divine beings, though Anakaris is a little more literal than most.
• Heroic Build: Anakaris is a humongous, superpowered titan of a man despite having spent the last several thousand years being dead.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter: Even among this zany, monstrous cast, Anakaris manages to stand out in terms of weirdness. He has no normal throw. His special throw is a strange sort of ranged attack. His vertical jump is a variable-altitude hover mode. His jumping kicks sprout from the ground below him. And so on.
• Mummy: Though rather than preserving himself for the next life, he was a mummy made specifically for him to return to this one.
• Mummy Wrap: Several of his attacks involve wrapping the opponent in his bandages before slamming them to the floor.
• Nepharious Pharaoh: Played straight in the animated series, but downplayed in the games, where he purely wants to defend his kingdom.
• No, I Am Behind You: Anakaris can back dash against the stage wall to exit out of the screen and appear on the other side.
• Out of Focus: While Anakaris is certainly a favorite of the developer team's, being the star of a minigame released in Japan and one of the fourth Darkstalkers to appear in Marvel vs. Capcom 2, he is pretty much ignored (alongside Rikuo and Sasquatch) when it comes to the overall plot in other mediums.
• Power Echoes: All of his win quotes in the Japanese versions of the games feature this. For some reason, this did not carry over into the translations.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: An ancient pharaoh who personally beats back invasions into his kingdom.

Lord Raptor / Zabel Zarock

Rocker of Death

You should thank me. That broken face is very becoming on you.

Class: Zombie
Origin: Dominion of Australia, 1889 (present-day Australia)
Voiced by: ^note Yuji Ueda (games), Kōichi Yamadera (Vampire Hunter OVA, Japanese), Scott McNeil (Western cartoon and Night Warriors OVA)

During his life, Raptor was a successful, if niche, rock star who captivated his audience with his enigmatic voice. Behind the curtains, he was a cultist who incorporated the cultic text into his songs, which influenced the audience. During his final live "Sacrifice", he took his own life and the lives of 100 fans. This caught the demon lord Ozom's attention, who resurrected Raptor as his servant. However, Raptor planned to overthrow Ozom when he got powerful enough — and Ozom himself knows this, and sends Le Malta to keep an eye on him.

After spending time away from Ozom's castle, Raptor discovers that it has disappeared (see Jedah's section below) and he is sucked into Majigen shortly after.

He has a crush on Hsien-Ko, as seen in their unique pre-fight animation, and looks at her with Wingding Eyes, while Le Malta has a thing for B.B. Hood.

---

• Abhorrent Admirer: He's repeatedly shown to have a thing for Hsien-Ko. Not only is he not her type, but she's not fond of his reckless disregard for other people. For his part, he would probably rather think of himself as a Kavorka Man.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: The OVA shows him stating he only takes a bit of people's souls rather than all of it, likely as to avoid unnecessary attention. He also rescues Felicia from some Dark Hunters, something he's not likely to do in most other media.
• Adaptational Wimp: The cartoon downplays his strength a lot and makes him more of a loser rather than the sadistic monster he is.
• Air-Dashing: The Trope Codifier for this mechanic in Fighting Games, as the only character in the first game to have an air dash.
• Alliterative Name: His name in the Japanese versions, as noted above.
• Assist Character: Le Malta, a weird blob-like Oculothorax who aids him during Hell Dunk (as a basketball net) and Dark Force.
• Awesome Aussie: If turning people into basketballs isn't enough, there's the small fact that he's a zombie who plays rock and roll.
• Ax-Crazy: A more literal one than most, since he actually plays an ax. On the other hand, his cultist practices did pay off exactly how he wanted them to, so one could argue that, in spite of his violent ways, there was some basis to his crazy behavior.
• Be the Ball: Happens to the opponent during Raptor's Hell Dunk EX move. Le Malta, ever the faithful Swiss Army Knife-esque companion, serves as the basketball hoop.
• Chainsaw Good: Many of his attacks involve him transforming parts of his body into chainsaw blades. During his "Ultimate Undead" Dark Force, Le Malta turns into a chainsaw which Zabel wields in a more conventional fashion.
• Depending on the Writer: While Raptor's basic design, fighting style, and backstory (and his attraction to Hsien-Ko) has for the most part remained consistent, his role and to a lesser extent his alignment tends to differ. In the North American Animated series, Lord Raptor is a Laughably Evil Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain minion of Pyron. In the Anime OVA, he is more of a charismatic dark Anti-Hero who saves Felicia when a bunch of enraged church-goers try to kill her. Conversely, in the Darkstalkers manga released at about the same time as the OVA, he is a flat out villainous monster whom Felicia and Jon Talbain must stop. In the games, while he is not exactly a good guy, he generally seems to be more fixated on trying to be powerful enough to overthrow Lord Ozom (a far more evil entity than he is; this is later switched to Jedah during the events of Vampire Savior) than anything else.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: His grab attacks look like he's thrusting into his opponents while impaling them with his razor-sharp ribcage.
• Dub Name Change: Zabel Zarock in Japan, Lord Raptor everywhere else.
• Even Evil Has Standards: In the OVA. When a group of Dark Hunters try to kill Felicia while she was down and unconscious, he takes offense at this dishonorable act and proceeds to open a can of whoopass on the Dark Hunters by devouring their souls, saving Felicia in the process.
• Evil Diva: A rare male example, he's a zombie heavy metal rock guitarist and cult leader who killed 100 of his own fans during his final "Sacrifice" tour.
• Evil Sounds Raspy: Compare his original nonsensical English voice done by Yuuji Ueda in the older games, to his current voice still done by Ueda in both Namco × Capcom and Project × Zone. He speaks more coherent Japanese and growls a lot more, akin to some of Ueda's other roles.
• Faux Affably Evil: He is a dangerously homicidal member of the living dead, but that doesn't stop him from being one of the most hilarious characters in fighting game history.
  What? Go to hell!? I just came from there!
• Final Boss: To B.B. Hood in Vampire Savior, challenging her after announcing he's taking over Jedah's plans after he was defeated.
• Going Commando: His intro animation features a Wardrobe Malfunction that exposes his bony zombie butt.
• Hollywood Satanism: A rock star who was secretly a cult leader and used his music to influence people before murdering a large number of them in a sacrifice to a demonic being? It's hard to get more Hollywood Satanism than that.
• Inconsistent Spelling:
  • Some sources, even at this very wiki, refer to him as "Lord Rapter".
  • Le Malta gets this too, as he's sometimes referred to as Le Marta or La Malta. Sources also flip flop between whether or not there's a space in his name (Le Malta vs. LeMalta).
• I Was Quite a Looker: Really. Some winposes and artwork show his "living days" appearance, which is far more flattering than that of his current form.
• Laughing Mad: Most notably in Vampire Savior, when he does the Pursuit move or Death Hurricane in EX status — "Woohoo-hahahahahaaa!!"
• Musical Assassin: Especially in his backstory, where he stole the souls of a hundred members of his audience during a concert. He also uses his electric guitar as a counter attack.
• No, I Am Behind You: Hell's Gate — a handy teleport move.
• Not Quite Flight: The first playable character in the series to have a mid-air dash, which gives him highly flexible aerial mobility.
• Older Than They Look: Material dating back from the first game states his birth-year is 1889; however, the heavy metal genre would only appear in the late 60s, and given he was a heavy metal rocker during his life and died relatively young, this throws his backstory into contradiction. This birth-year was likely left over from when he was conceived as a World War I soldier.
• Our Zombies Are Different: A mix of Type V (voodoo) and Type R (revenant). He was resurrected to be a servant but is not explicitly a slave and retains his memories.
• Phlebotinum Overload: His Vampire Savior ending is a humorous take on this, where he absorbs too much of the defeated Jedah's power and explodes in a nuclear blast.
• The Power of Rock: Le Malta takes the form of a large amplifier during one of Zabel's Guard Cancel moves.
• Rock Me, Asmodeus!: Raptor was a one man cult leader who used the curses and spells from the Chapter of Tolgaido, an ancient Hebrew text detailing the customs of Makai, in order to mind-control and hypnotize his followers to his whim. After his grand finale performance to gain ultimate power, he receives backing from Ozom and Le Malta, one of the three rulers of Makai. There is much Truth in Television in this interpretation of metal and rock music; back around the 1970's and 1980's, metal garnered a great deal of opposition by Christian morality groups for breaking from the norm and going into detail about darker subjects, including the negativity of life and satanism, with some claiming that such bands were cultists who used music to spread their word. One famous urban legend posits that playing metal and rock records backwards reveals subliminal messages to worship the devil, which also plays into Raptor's backstory.
• Shock and Awe: Evil Scream and Death Voltage.
• Shout-Out:
  • In his Dark Force special, Raptor fuses Le Malta with his right hand and turns it into a chainsaw, looking just like Ash.
  • The short jingle played upon the activation of his Dark Force sounds suspiciously like the intro to Michael Jackson's "Bad."
  • When hit with Midnight Bliss, he resembles Naomi Armitage and even references a scene from the anime.
  • Being a heavy metal-zombie often shown with the Union Flag (he's actually Australian, though the UK flag does feature as a canton on the Aussie flag), Raptor bears a close resemblance to Eddie the Head, mascot of the British heavy metal band Iron Maiden.
• Sir Cameos-a-Lot: He hasn't been playable in a Capcom Crossover Game yet. He has made plenty of background cameos in them though, as well as Capcom Fighting Evolution, Puzzle Fighter, Teppen, and even Street Fighter Alpha 2 in his human form, as a guest at Ken's wife Eliza's birthday boat party.
• Spin Attack: Death Hurricane, his take on a classic tatsumaki attack.
• Spikes of Villainy: His ribs are protruding from his decayed chest and he pushes other bones out of his body to spear the opponent for some of his attacks.
• The Starscream: His ending in the first game states that he is just waiting for the best opportunity to backstab Ozom and take his place as a demon lord; too bad Jedah beat him to the punch. This is most prominent in the American cartoon, where he occasionally tries to double-cross Pyron.
• This Is a Drill: His Loudness Screw move, a descending spinning attack in which his legs fuse into an insectoid shape.
• Trouser Space: He keeps his guitar down his pants.
• Vocal Evolution: After voicing him in the cartoon, Scott McNeill, being the only actor to reprise his role in the OVA, gives that version of Lord Raptor a deeper and more guttural sounding voice to emphasize how much more menacing he is.
• Wardrobe Malfunction: When he "uncurls" for his intro animation, his pants have slipped down, and before he pulls them up you can briefly see his bare, bony behind.
• Wearing a Flag on Your Head: On his pants and guitar in this case. He's emblazoned with the classic rocker Union Flag of the United Kingdom, and despite him being originally Australian, this does still make sense, as the Union Flag features as a canton in the upper left corner of the Australian flag.
• Writers Cannot Do Math: His birth year of 1889 was meant to be a reference to the zombie-based literary Trope Maker, The Country of the Comers-Back, but seeing as how his whole shtick revolves around the Satanic Panic of the 1970's and 1980's, it would mean he'd be in his 80's or 90's during the peak of his music career.
• Zombie Gait: His air dash is a particularly ridiculous (and awesome) example.

Victor von Gerdenheim

Supernatural Corpse

My power can overcome any challenger!

Class: Frankenstein's Monster
Origin: German Confederation, 1830 (present-day Germany)
Voiced by: ^note Kan Tokumaru (games), Ian James Corlett (Western cartoon)

He is the creation of a professor of the same name, who died some time after Victor's birth. Victor, not understanding the concept of death, thought that the professor was ignoring him, and decided that the best way for the professor to acknowledge him was to become the strongest being in the world. That failed, but that didn't matter since he had met his "older" sister, the prototype Emily, and she became his new focus. Emily wasn't supposed to be functioning, due to her time-limited power problems, but Victor's self-generating electricity leaked enough power for her to be constantly activated. Afterward, they lived in peace for a time...

... until Emily suddenly stopped functioning from the strain of living for a longer amount of time than she was supposed to. When the Majigen appears, Victor decides that in order to bring her to life, he must gather the wandering souls and inject their spiritual energies into Emily. In his ending, he succeeds, but dies as his own soul was the last one that had to be implemented.

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• Adaptational Intelligence: The American cartoon not only gives him the ability to speak properly, as opposed to Hulk Speak, but he's also as intelligent as an adult, as opposed to being childlike, as per his in-game persona.
• Artificial Human: He's a Flesh Golem created by a mad Herr Doctor for reasons unknown.
• Ass Kicks You: Victor’s light, medium, and hard close kick attacks increase from a gentle butt-bash, to a full on wallop, where he literally slams his hugely-inflated ass into the opponent's face. He even uses his ass to squeeze and throw opponents. It helps that he's capable of making his body parts grow to several times their normal size — including the aforementioned posterior.
• Big Little Brother: He's a lot taller than Emily, owing to him being a traditional Frankenstein-esque creature, while Emily looks like a normal girl.
• Creating Life: Victor and his "sister" Emily were created by Professor Victor von Gerdenheim.
• Dumb Muscle: He doesn't understand the concept of death, and is a classic massively-muscled simpleton.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: His one-sleeved German-style jacket.
• Frankenstein's Monster: His obvious inspiration, and he adheres to most of the associated imagery and behaviors, though strangely he can produce more electricity than the lightning bolt that supposedly animated him.
• Gentle Giant: Despite his appearance, he fights to impress his creator and save his dead older sister, Emily.
• Go Out with a Smile: His arcade ending in the third game, in which he succeeds in reviving Emily, with him openly stating that it makes him happy, despite it being at the cost of his own life.
• Heroic Sacrifice: To keep his "sister" alive, he first gathers the souls of the other Darkstalkers, and then uses his last drop of energy to revive her, killing himself in the process.
• High-Pressure Emotion: Turns red, spouts steam from his ears, and makes a whistling teakettle sound during one of his win-poses in the first two games.
• Hulk Speak: Present in his original Japanese dialogue, complete with constant boasting of how he's the strongest. It's also emphasized in that all of his lines are written in hiragana only, which gives them a simple, childlike quality. He also speaks this way in the short-lived UDON adaptation.
• Jaw Drop: His draw game animation.
• Killed Off for Real: In his Vampire Savior ending, he gives his soul up as the final part of the ritual to revive his sister Emily.
• Launcher Move: The first half of his Mega Spike command throw consists of grabbing the opponent and kneeing them into the air. He then follows up with a Meteor Move by jumping up and spiking the midair opponent into the ground.
• Lightning Bruiser: Besides the obvious, he is not that slow on his feet, particularly since gaining a forward dash in Savior.
• Macho Camp: Musclebound he may be, but Victor also exhibits some brilliantly campy movement patterns (his taunt especially), and has a fondness for shaking his ass about, as well as whacking the opponent with it.
• Meteor Move: For the second half of his Mega Spike command throw, he jumps into the air and spikes his opponent into the ground.
• Monochromatic Eyes: Solid white.
• Nose Nuggets: Has a habit of picking his nose, even as he attacks. It's been said that this might be a residual habit from the original owner of one of the bodies that he was he was built from.
• No Social Skills: The reason he isn't too bright socially is because his "father" died not too long after his "birth."
• Shaking the Rump: Emphasis is placed on his large, shapely buns, which he uses to close-range attack the opponent, throw them, and also taunt them, shaking his butt from side to side.
• Shaping Your Attacks: He can conjure up images of his creator, Professor von Gerdenheim, to aid him in his attacks through channelling electricity.
• Shock and Awe: Most of his attacks have a residual electric effect, if not an outright electrocution, and he is constantly giving off sparks.
• Shout-Out:
  • ‘Victor’, as in Victor Frankenstein.
  • Also, one of his victory quotes from Vampire Savior:
  Don't make me mad. You wouldn't like me if I get mad!
  • He can perform Sagat's Tiger Knee.
• Sizeshifter: He can change the size of the body parts he uses to attack with, including his hands, feet, forehead — and ass.
• Spin Attack: Has a Lariat-like move, much like fellow powerhouses Haggar and Zangief.
• Uncommon Time: His Darkstalkers theme is mostly in 7/8. His Night Warriors/Vampire Hunter theme is mostly in 3/4, but switches to 13/16 for two bars a couple times.
• Use Your Head: His Mega Forehead move in Vampire Savior is a rushing headbutt in which his head increases to at least ten times its original size.
• The Von Trope Family: He hails from Germany, where surnames of this type originate.

Rikuo / Aulbath

Aquatic Hero

You air-breathers wear defeat well. You must practice losing often!

Class: Merman
Origin: Brazil, 1953
Voiced by: ^note Yuji Ueda (games), Scott McNeil (Western cartoon)

Rikuo was the ruler of a peaceful kingdom of merfolk, but the arrival of Pyron caused the underwater earthquakes and volcanoes that destroyed the kingdom. Believing that he was the last of his kind, he sets out for revenge until he meets a mermaid named Aqueria. Overjoyed, he marries her and sets aside his goal of revenge to start a new kingdom.

Encouraged and believing that there are other survivors, he starts searching for them. This results in spending less time with his family. One day, one of his sons, Ricky/Alba, vanishes. He curses himself and contemplates how he could protect his own kingdom if he cannot protect his family. Believing that his son disappeared into the Majigen, he starts his search there. He eventually finds his son playing with another mermaid, and thus Rikuo's new kingdom began.

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• Adaptational Attractiveness: The "curiously attractive" gag aside, the cartoon gives Rikuo a much more human-like face, with a strong jaw and abs, with none of the pores that release his poison gas being obviously present.
• Adaptation Name Change: He's called "Riku" as opposed to Rikuo in the cartoon.
• Ascended Glitch: In some versions of the first game, Rikuo's crouching fierce punch (a.k.a. the "crab punch") could not be blocked while crouching. Upon hit it would trip the opponent, so in conjunction with his crouching hard kick, which also tripped the opponent and could not be blocked while standing, he had a frustrating 50/50 guessing game that was difficult to escape. It was alluded to in every game since in the form of his Direct Scissors EX special.
• Dub Name Change: Aulbath in Japan, Rikuo everywhere else.
• Elemental Shapeshifter: In the first two games, his method of dashing involves partially liquefying his body and flowing across the ground, although this is hard to notice in motion. More noticeable is his time out loss animation in said games, in which his legs melt out from beneath him.
• Even the Guys Want Him: A recurring gag in the US cartoon was that he was repeatedly told that he was "curiously attractive for a Fishman." and a large portion of these compliments came from the male Darkstalkers. By the last episode, Rikuo wearily replies to the comment with a sigh and "So I've been told."
• Fish People: He's a handsome merman, sporting green scaly skin and gills, but is also perfectly capable of surviving on land.
• Floating in a Bubble: His Water Jail Super Combo traps the opponent in a large floating bubble.
• Four-Fingered Hands: And four-toed feet as well.
• Gemstone Assault: Gem's Anger bombards the foe with giant pearls.
• Making a Splash: Some of his specials involve water, such as Aqua Shepard, Sea Rage and Ocean Rage, in the latter of which he summons a torrent of water and sends it gushing towards the opponent. He also produces water to increase his dashing speed.
• Metronomic Man Mashing: With his tongue, no less, as part of his taunt.
• Mid-Boss: In the first Vampire game he, along with Sasquatch, are inexplicably only fought when the other playable characters are defeated. This is presumably a hint that either the fighters were supposed to be fought in a set order (a la Street Fighter II': Champion Edition) or that the game runs on the same engine as Super Street Fighter II, with Rikuo and Sasquatch filling the roles for Balrog and Vega. This always means a fight against him is fairly hellish, due to his tricky moveset and the increasing difficulty as one of the final opponents.
• Mix-and-Match Critter: Rikuo has attributes of seemingly every water-dwelling creature, from frogs to crabs to octopi to...
• Our Mermaids Are Different: Rikuo is a mishmash of "curiously attractive" mermen and "scary" mermen.
• Papa Wolf: The loss of his son is what leads to his involvement, regarding Jedah's scheme in Vampire Savior.
• Power-Up Mount: A giant horseshoe crab in Ocean's Rage.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: He believes his royal duties include finding his scattered merfolk subjects and rebuilding their civilization, and he acts on this — even to the exclusion of his immediate family.
• Poisonous Person: His Poison Breath special creates clouds of toxic gas that will temporarily stun opponents.
• Power Pincers: Both of his crouching hard punches (the first of which was later repurposed into an Ascended Glitch super) involve his hands becoming giant crab claws, with which he snaps at the opponent's ankles.
• Shapeshifter Weapon: Rikuo has the ability to transform his body parts into those of assorted aquatic creatures, including crab claws, stingray stingers, and conch shells. This is stated to be a form of mimicry displayed by members of his species.
• Shout-Out: His name (in the Western versions) is a shout-out to Ricou Browning, the actor who played the titular monster in Creature from the Black Lagoon.
• Super-Scream: His Sonic Wave special stops the opponent in their tracks, opening them up for attack.
• Water-Geyser Volley: His Aqua Spread super generates a column of water that throws opponents high into the air.

Sasquatch

Arctic Hero

I've had knots in my hair that were harder to take out than you!

Class: Bigfoot
Origin: Dominion of Canada, 1903 (present-day Canada)
Voiced by: ^note Kan Tokumaru (games), Dale Wilson (Western cartoon)

Sasquatch is the most noble of his tribe. When Pyron descends to Earth, Sasquatch's community starts to be constantly attacked by other Darkstalkers, prompting him to go on a journey to defend his fellow bigfeet from their enemies. After he defeats Pyron, he convinces his tribe to plan an invasion against the human civilization. However, the plan is aborted when they learn that humans have bananas in their food supplies. A friendly alliance was then formed between Sasquatch's tribe and the humans.

After returning from one journey to human civilization, Sasquatch finds a huge hole where his village is supposed to be. Believing that his friends were captured and taken to Makai, he goes into Majigen to rescue them. When he finds them, he discovers that his friends... willingly allowed themselves to be captured in exchange for a lot of bananas.

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• Adaptational Name Change: The western cartoon changes his name to Bigfoot.
• Abnormal Limb Rotation Range: Big Typhoon, appropriately enough, is a kick attack where he spins his massive foot into the opponent.
• Ass Kicks You: A giant butt-bash is featured at the end of his EX move, Big Sledge.
• Assist Character: Let's see, he has a whale, explosive penguins, a pack of dogs, and some cute little snowmen.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Big Punch is, well, a big punch, making the move pretty telegraphed.
• Banana Peel: As laughable as it sounds, he really has a special move, Big Trap, where he damages the opponent by making them slip on a banana peel.
• Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: He's a bigfoot named Sasquatch and is associated with arctic climates of northern Canada, in the same way a yeti is in Asia.
• Boisterous Bruiser: Actually a little more squat than most examples, but loud and ready to engage in battle. This eventually leads him to try and rally his fellow bigfeet to start a war to take over the world. The rest of them are a peaceful people though, so it probably wouldn't have worked even if they didn't reach a common agreement with the humans.
• Breath Weapon: His Big Breath and Big Snow attacks, in which he gapes his mouth open massively to send out a big blast of snow, can freeze his enemies.
• Delicious Distraction: Bananas of all things. Jedah didn't even have a struggle to kidnap Sasquatch's tribe when using bananas as bait.
• Finger Poke of Doom: Several of his normal attacks involve attacking with his fingers or toes, which are comparable in size to the limbs to most of the rest of the cast. His ending sequence in the first two games shows him breaking a tree in half with a two-toed kick.
• Freeze Ray: One of the strongest shot attacks in the game, his Big Freeze has the highest priority among projectiles.
• Human Hammer-Throw: Big Swing, which in true professional wrestling fashion, also leaves him dizzy.
• Hurricane Kick: His move Big Cyclone in Night Warriors.
• An Ice Person: Many of his attacks, including Big Brunch, where he swallows the enemy, leave them frozen for a time.
• Instant Bandages: On his chin, when hit by a knockdown blow.
• The Juggernaut: The variant of his Dark Force, Big Resistor, gives him a super armor effect temporarily, so that he can take any hits without being stunned.
• Killer Rabbit: The aforementioned penguins.
• Lightning Bruiser: He can really move for someone so big. He has quick jumps and hop-style dashes that let him speedily apply pressure and break crouching opponents' guard. His unique combination of both speed and power is likely a big part of what made him a top-tier character throughout the entire course of the series.
• Mid-Boss: Like Rikuo, he's strangely only fought after the other playable fighters are defeated in the original game.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: He likes to fight, to the point of announcing an invasion on another civilization on a whim, but he's deep down a good guy who can be easily pacified, as long as you don't piss him off.
• Snowlems: One of his victory poses shows him being cheered on by a group of small snowmen — "Yatta-Yattaaaa!". He is also turned into one when hit by Anakaris' Pharaoh Curse.
• Spikes of Doom: Big Tower produces a wave of giant ice peaks that fire out across the arena floor.
• Stout Strength: He's almost completely round, but packs a serious punch.
• Tail Slap: For one his specials, Big Ice Burn, he uses his icy breath to freeze the ground, which then becomes a deep, ice-covered pond his opponent flails about on before crashing through the ice, finally being ejected by a whale's tail.
• Take Over the World: According to his ending in the first game, this is what he and his tribe planned to do after he defeated Pyron. The Freudian Excuse for this was that his people suffered attacks from humans for a long time, but fortunately the whole thing was settled down when they realized they could have a peaceful co-existence with humans as long the humans provided bananas for them. In the second game, it was changed to them being attacked by other Darkstalkers, making the human attack more of a means to an end rather than revenge.
• Theme Naming: Notice how many times the word "big" appears in his movelist?
• Trademark Favorite Food: Likely because of their rarity in frozen, polar Canada, him and his people love bananas.
• Wipe the Floor with You: His Dog Sled special involves him being pulled by dogs, and using the opponent as the sled.

Huitzil / Phobos

Killer Machine

Target destroyed. Mission completed.

Class: Robot^*with a head shaped like a Dogū, a small clay figurine commonly made during Japan's Jōmon period.
Origin: Mayan Empire, 520 (present-day Mexico)
Voiced by: ^note Garry Chalk (western cartoon), Ward Perry (Night Warriors OVA, English)

Huitzil is one of many robots created by Pyron. Their main mission was to destroy all life forms on Earth, and so they killed all of the dinosaurs and went into hibernation. They were later found by the Mayans and were used by them. Shortly before Pyron came down, one Huitzil model was assigned the task of evaluating the situation on Earth, and in his ending the verdict is to cleanse Earth of any non-aboriginal human.

Huitzil was sucked into Majigen along with a child named Cecil, and a bug in its programming made it protect him, but since everything in Majigen is potentially dangerous to Cecil, it results in him, to quote Hardcore Gaming 101: "basically going on a killing spree across Majigen while taking Cecil for the ride."

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• Adaptational Heroism: In the cartoon, he's not a creation of Pyron. In fact, he was built by Aztecs to protect the Earth from aliens like him.
• Assist Character:
  • In Vampire Savior 2, one of his specials consists of him summoning three other Huitzil units, who come down to assist him with Beam Spam moves.
  • Up until the final release, his Night Warriors Final Guardian super also involved summoning another robot.
• Badass and Child Duo: A humongous robot who travels Majigen with a little orphaned boy.
• Bamboo Technology: Although discovered by the Mayans and later sealed within Teotihuacan, it turns out that Huitzil and his kind were created by Pyron 65 million years ago.
• Beam Spam: He's the only character with a full screen-length laser move as a normal special.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: The fact that he has alternately been cast as both a weapon of genocide and a noble guardian may mean that his true purpose is simply incomprehensible to us. And considering the last request of the original Huitzil is to "protect Cecil", which causes them to take over the human race...
• A Boy and His X: An orphaned boy and his ancient weapon of mass destruction.
• Combining Mecha: A scrapped variant of his Final Guardian super whose graphics◊ remain hidden in the released game's data involves him summoning and combining with a backup robot to form some heavy weaponry.
• Comm Links: Has a flip-up communicator built into his wrist which can be seen in one of his Night Warriors win-poses. The animation is actually a leftover from an earlier version of his Final Guardian super which involved using it to call in another robot.
• Cyber Cyclops: The backup unit he called in during the location test version of Final Guardian featured a single eye. One frame of this backup robot actually remains visible◊ in the finished game, with Huitzil taking on its appearance for a split second during the beginning of the animation.
• Do-Anything Robot: Seems to be able to manipulate gravity and magnetism, in addition to having an impossible amount of gadgets on it.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: One of his attacks involve driving a nail into his opponents... coming from in-between its legs.
• The Dragon: To Pyron in the first game.
• Dub Name Change: Phobos in Japan, Huitzil everywhere else.
• Eyes Always Shut: As per the dogu motif, his eyes are closed by default. They occasionally open to reveal glowing red lenses.
• Fantasy Metals: All About Vampire states that his shapeshifting capabilities are the result of being composed of a special alloy that cannot be forged on Earth.
• Freeze Ray: Which he blasts from his eyes, arms and feet.
• Friend to All Living Things: At least to birds, squirrels, and descendants of Mayans, including a lost little boy named Cecil.
• Gentle Giant: To Cecil only. When Huitzil launches a special attack, he conjures up a shield to protect Cecil.
• Gravity Screw: Has an attack that causes the enemy to constantly move toward the top of the screen.
• Hard Light: He forms a glowing, rectangular force field in front of him to block attacks. He can even push this wall of light at the opponent as a guard cancel.
• Heel–Face Turn: By the time of the third game, thanks to Cecil's influence. The OVA presents a better case, as Huitzil's sibling robots valiantly fight a losing struggle against Pyron to save mankind.
• High-Pressure Emotion: His victory portrait in the original Darkstalkers game has him spewing steam from his ears.
• Hollywood Magnetism: His method of grabbing opponents for throw attacks involves transforming his arms into archetypal U-shaped magnets, which draw in all opponents equally well regardless of whether they are made of metal, flesh and bone, fire, bandages, shapeshifting liquid, or spiritual ether.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: Huitzil has a whole assortment of melee and long-range weaponry stored within his body. He's supposed to be an advanced robot, but this is taking it a bit too far.
• Idle Animation: In the first two games, if he stands still long enough to cycle through his stance animation twice, he'll clench his fists and vibrate a bit before restarting the stance cycle.
• Instant Awesome: Just Add Mecha!: Is essentially a giant robot within a videogame of monsters, playing on the fear that one day robots will take over the human race.
• Killer Robot: To varying degrees, depending on what backstory that's rolling with at the time.
• Laser Sight: His Genocide Vulcan special causes him to fire a laser sight upwards at a 45 degree angle. If the opponent crosses its path, they proceed to eat lead.
• Lightning Bruiser: He's surprisingly quick on his feet for a giant alien robot.
• Little Guy, Big Buddy: His surprisingly sweet relationship with Cecil.
• Mayincatec: Stated to be Mayan, but named after an Aztec god. Depending on what you read, his place of origin also varies from Tenochtitlan (Aztec), to Teotihuacan (the cultural background of which remains debated), to Chichen Itza (Mayan).
• Meaningful Name: Huitzil comes from the Aztec God Huitzilopochtli ("Left-Handed Hummingbird"). Fittingly, some of his artwork has little birds perched on him.
• Mecha-Mooks: Inverted in both the games and the OVA. In the former, Huitzil's final act is to activate the remainder of his brethren to protect Cecil. The pack of Huitzils in the OVA band together to stop Pyron, as they see the value in humanity's existence. Unfortunately, they're unable to defeat Pyron.
• Mini-Boss: In the first two games, he's always fought before Pyron.
• More Dakka: Huitzil has a gatling gun for an anti-air. He can also turn all four limbs into what are basically assault rifles.
• Multiple-Choice Past: His backstory changes a lot, even by Capcom fighting game standards;
  • In the first game, he was said to be a killer robot sent to earth by unspecified aliens 65 million years ago, where he killed the dinosaurs before going into hibernation until Pyron's arrival.
  • In the second game, he was said to have been a guardian robot created by the Mayans.
  • And since then, the two stories have blended together: Now he is said to have originally been made by Pyron specifically (although the reason a being such as Pyron would need an army of killer robots is never really made clear), sent to Earth millions of years ago where he killed the dinosaurs, went into hibernation, and was then discovered and repurposed by the Mayans millions of years later.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Huitzil, short for Huitzilopochtli ("Left-Handed Hummingbird"), was an Aztec warrior god known for killing most of his 400 siblings soon after he was born. Various human sacrifices were offered to his temple. Phobos, a figure from Greek mythology, was the son of Ares (god of war) and Aphrodite (goddess of love), as well as the personification of fear itself. He usually accompanied dear ol' dad onto the battlefield.
• Not Quite Flight: Huitzil has a very unusual "hover jump" that lets him float in place in midair for a variable amount of time, as well as change his trajectory mid-jump. Along with Lord Raptor, he was also one of the first characters in the series to have a midair dash. These two mechanics combine to give him a great amount of aerial mobility.
• One-Man Band: Pulls out a full set of musical instruments during one of his winposes, which he apparently keeps to hand along with his arsenal of weapons.
• Papa Wolf: Do not hurt Cecil. In fact, his final act after defeating Jedah is to spread this amongst his brethren.
• Phlebotinum Killed the Dinosaurs: His initial Darkstalkers backstory states that he and his brethren were sent to earth 65 million years ago and caused the K-T extinction event before going into hibernation.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Though they are usually closed.
• Shapeshifter Weapon: Drills, wrecking balls, buzz saws, claws, gatling guns, missile launchers, giant magnets... you name it, he can turn a body part into it.
• Shoulders of Doom: Giant spherical shoulders decorated with some zig-zag lines reminiscent of design motifs seen in ancient sculpture. They transform nicely into wrecking balls or giant spiked wheels.
• Shout-Out:
  • His laser-firing pose is lifted straight from Ultraseven.
  • He's a pretty thorough homage to the Laputa robot. From his gentle giant aspects getting along with birds and at least one child to being a forgotten war machine who's part of a mass-produced army sleeping in ancient ruins waiting to fly off and swarm mankind with lasers.
• Sphere of Destruction: His Erasing Sphere EX move, which fires a small, slow-moving projectile that eventually explodes into a large, spherical blast.
• Splash Damage: His Might Launcher missiles cause large explosions that can damage the opponent even if the missile itself doesn't touch them.
• Theme Naming: The names of his normal attacks all end in a code letter. Examples include "Death Ball Q", "Metal Breaker V", and "Flying Saw W".
• This Is a Drill: Many of his attacks involve drills, including his crouching light punch in every game, his crouching medium punch, crouching hard punch, and close-range standing medium kick in the first two games, and his pursuit attack in the third game.
• Tron Lines: The hover sphere his lower body transforms into when he jumps is covered with rotating and changing patterns of glowing blue and green lines. He also has glowing red lines in rune-like patterns inside his shoulder and neck sockets, although you don't get to see those very often.
• Wave-Motion Gun: His ES Plasma Beam.
• Wingding Eyes: The lights in his eyes form all sorts of patterns from animation to animation, from rather standard "pupils", to EKG-like graph lines, to rings, to static, to racing streaks of light reminiscent of Ideon.

Pyron

Ruler of the Universe

I have crushed stars! What chance have you against me?

Class: Alien
Origin: Planet Hellstorm (year formed on Earth: 1991)
Voiced by: ^note Nobuyuki Hiyama (games), Richard Newman (Western cartoon), Shinji Ogawa (Vampire Hunter OVA, Japanese), David Kaye (Night Warriors OVA, English)

Originating on the planet Hellstorm, Pyron lived for millions of years and evolved into a cosmic being. He decides to consume planets/collect them as jewelry. He came to Earth during the time of the dinosaurs and created the Huitzil army to force the extinction event which killed them off. Why he didn't take Earth back then is not known, but he comes back to our world much later in time, only to be defeated and consumed by Demitri.

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• Adaptation Origin Connection: The OVA makes him Hsien-Ko and Mei-Ling's archenemy, as his original comet form causes their mother to give her life to save China.
• Affably Evil: He has his moments in the Western cartoon.
• Aliens Are Bastards: He's a planet conquering/destroying alien that has taken an interest in Earth, and is one of the few unambiguously evil characters made playable.
• Battle Aura: Pyron, being an alien made of burning-hit plasma, is perpetually wreathed in flames. His Planet Burn throw surrounds whoever he is fighting in this fiery aura.
• Big Bad: Of the first two games (since they had pretty much the same story with gameplay changes) and the OVA.
• Blood Knight: Returns to Earth on the off chance there might be creatures worth fighting, since Huitzil apparently didn't kill everything when sent there by him eons in the past. He has no problem taking on the Darkstalkers, until he meets his match and is destroyed by Demitri.
• The Collector: Of planets, which he sees as things of beauty. He sees the inhabitants of Earth (or at least the Darkstalkers) as tarnish on an otherwise lovely jewel.
• Composite Character: He was the one who revived Lord Raptor as a zombie in the Western cartoon. He is even called "Ozu", king of the zombies, in that source.
• Cosmic Being: Compared to the mostly Earth-bound Darkstalkers, he's an Outside-Context Problem, and gameplay-wise he's tougher than the normal characters, since he is the boss of the first two games.
• Eldritch Location: Some console editions of Vampire Savior added him in with an ending where he considers Jedah's realm to be this. He was confused that its rules were different than the universe as he knows it, and was upset it disappeared when Jedah went down, as he wanted it for himself. He gets over it and ventures on to the Andromeda Galaxy.
• Energy Beings: In his own words, he is lord of the living flame.
• Evil Is Burning Hot: He's a Cosmic Being made of flame who originally sees humans as a stain on planet Earth, but decides to spare them a fiery fate after becoming Intrigued by Humanity.
• Evil Laugh: His win-pose, in which Pyron turns into a pillar of a flame that sports his giant-sized, demonically howling face.
• Final Boss: Of the original Darkstalkers and Night Warriors: Darkstalkers' Revenge. He's also the last enemy most of the main characters battle in the OVA.
• Galactic Conqueror: He's a collector and eater of planets who does not care much for conquering, but he comes off like this to the living creatures that happen to inhabit the planets he comes across.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: His ending has him wearing the earth around his finger like a piece of jewelry. Pyron is classified as a "Rank A Darkstalker," the same rank as Demitri before he lost most of his power, and a step below Morrigan's complete form, and Jedah too.
• Hand Blast: Sol Smasher, a huge fireball which can be shot at an angle in the air.
• Horned Humanoid: Not that he makes much use of them.
• Intrigued by Humanity: Whereas the first game established that his destruction of planets and devourment of life was For the Evulz, the port of Vampire Savior has Pyron seeing the potential of humans and deciding to spare them, completely skipping over Humanity on Trial.
• Killed Off for Real: He's defeated by Demitri in Night Warriors, explaining his absence from Vampire Savior. He returns as a non-canon character in Savior for the PlayStation and Sega Saturn ports. An example of Serendipity Writes the Plot, as he and the other two characters removed in Savior were actually going to be there at first, but there wasn't enough memory on the arcade board to hold all 14 previously-existing characters plus new ones.
• Large Ham: Very much so in the OVA and even more so in the cartoon.
• Meaningful Name: Remove the "n" from his name and you get "Pyro", fitting for a being made of flame.
• Nerf: Went from top tier in Night Warriors to bottom tier in Vampire Hunter 2/Vampire Savior 2.
• Planet Eater: And stars, too!
• Playing with Fire: Enough to cook and consume a planet the size of the Earth, and all of his moves are fire-based (he's literally made of fire).
• Precursor: He's the creator of the Mayincatec Huitzil bots.
• Rolling Attack: Zodiac Fire, in which he rolls across the arena floor like a Catherine wheel.
• Satanic Archetype: He's an alien take on Satan with a few traits of the Big Red Devil archetype. His long horns, his reddish-orange body, his association with fire and the abilities it gives him, and the fact that his home planet's name is Hellstorm. Even the OVA reveals that his influence on Earth was responsible for the evolution of the Darkstalkers.
• SNK Boss: His Darkstalkers incarnation in particular boasts such features as chip damage on all of his normal attacks and the ability to use any of his specials as a Guard Cancel.
• Spam Attack: His Cosmo Disruption, luckily it has a delayed reaction but that can also play to Pryon's advantage by using it to set up combos.
• Teleport Spam: His often frantically deployed "Galaxy Trip" teleport is one of the reasons why he is considered an SNK Boss.
• Theme Naming: His specials and supers combine various celestial bodies with a general fire motif.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: Collecting the occasional beautiful planet and engaging in combat every few millennia are the only diversions in his eternal life as he drifts alone through the vast, empty void of the cosmos. His Night Warriors epilogue in particular paints this angle in a fairly sympathetic light.

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