Nightmare Fuel / Street Fighter 6

Die a thousand deaths.

You thought just because Bison was gone, the nightmares would end? Nope! In fact, the Street Fighter world may have its most threatening villain yet on the horizon; and with the series making the jump to Capcom's own RE Engine, Street Fighter 6 is poised to set a new standard for brutality within the series.

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The Game

• Jamie's Level 3 Critical Art starts out cool enough, being an homage to classic kung fu films and even going through a black and white filter for a moment... until he pins the opponent by the neck and flat-out crushes their windpipe. The Sickening "Crunch!" heard afterward coupled with his opponent's pained expression, which is more readily apparent than any other game in the series thanks to the improved facial animations, does not help.
• Ken's situation. He's been framed for a major crime and forced to go on the run, leaving behind his family and business. Imagine your friends and family hearing that you might've behind a despicable criminal plot? Even if the people who really know Ken, like Eliza, Mel, and Ryu, don't believe it, the idea that anyone else would hear this news and see Ken as a terrible person all because of some faulty accusations induces an all-too-realistic-type of horror. And who's to say these same criminals aren't hunting him or his family down? Of course, the criminals may have poken the wrong bear, because they may have to face Guile too.
• JP takes the mystery of G and the members of the Illuminati, and combines it with Bison's dreaded Psycho Power. He puts on a more affable facade than his predecessor while being just as evil, relishing in making his opponents dance to his tune and enjoying the suffering he causes them.
  • His usage of Psycho Power is much more nightmarish than Bison's ever was. He channels it to rip open holes in reality itself, create deadly traps, and summon a very creepy looking shadow creature with Bison's Slasher Smile that claws at its opponents savagely. Dhalsim and Oro were right about Psycho Power's legacy.
  • His leitmotif, "The Plunderer", honestly does a great job of emphasizing the kind of threat that JP poses. "Why yes, I AM indeed the Big Bad, thank you for asking" vibes are one thing, but considering how JP uses his Psycho Power (to a more nightmarish extent than his predecessor), you can't help but feel like it'd also make JP out to be a slasher movie villain.
  • Jesus Christ, Interdiction is just flat-out horrifying! It's one thing for JP to warp to the opponent no matter where he is on the screen, but the actual Super Art itself takes Impaled with Extreme Prejudice to a whole 'nother level. Pair this with the opponent's agonized expression as JP holds them by the chin before imbuing them with Psycho Power as they helplessly explode, all while he caps off their explosion with a swift poke from his cane. The Critical Art version is even worse, as instead of simply striking them with his cane to trigger the explosion, he goes beyond even that and creates a series of Psycho Power spikes out of the ground that impale the opponent as they coalesce into a large crystalline spire of Psycho Power, which he then detonates with a Badass Fingersnap and an Evil Laugh. This might just be the single most terrifying Super in the franchise since Kage's Raging Demon. If the game were rated any higher, it might even be a flat-out Fatality.
  • His victory animation is moving in for what seems like a finishing stomp to his opponent's skull — only to miss by mere inches and casually walk off instead. He wants to maintain a positive image in broad public, but he makes it clear he'd murder his foes without hesitation if he felt like it.
• Cammy's new Super Arts are as terrifying as they are brutal. Her Level 2 starts as her Killer Bee Assault, but once it hits she performs the assassination technique she used to kill Albert Sellers, the British Minister of Justice, in Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie. Namely, twisting the opponent's neck with such force that it turns them a full 180 degrees before slamming them hard into the ground while kicking their legs forward, resulting in a vicious reverse crab lock that snaps her target's spine. Her Critical Art sees her blitzing past the opponent with Spiral Arrows and bringing them to their knees before she delivers a fatal kick to their neck, being framed as though she's kicking them so hard that she's decapitating them.
• Akuma, the dreaded raging demon himself, makes his return. But now his design is even more terrifying than ever before, with his hair being elderly, but a ghastly white, his ominous eyes glowing red, and his gi reduced to a tattered shroud. It's as if with his continued ascension towards his goal of surpassing heaven, he's slowly turning more and more into Oni...
• A.K.I. was already nightmarish in teasers, but her fighting style takes it to a whole new level. She's very much shaping up to be an even deadlier master of the Poison Hand than her own teacher F.A.N.G., and has combined it with Snake-Style Kung-Fu techniques for extra lethality. Her movements are extremely creepy, contorting her body unnervingly and slithering on the ground like a snake. Gone are the almost cartoonish-looking globs of poison which F.A.N.G. threw at opponents. A.K.I.'s use of poison is NOT Played for Laughs in any way as she creates disgusting looking bubbles of toxic venom to throw at her opponents, as well as throwing down puddles of poisonous sludge as opposed to her master's poison mines. Even worse, those nails on her clawed gauntlets? They can extend. Unlike F.A.N.G., who was all about throwing caution to the wind with up-close pressure, you are not safe from A.K.I. at mid-to-long range since she can simply extend her claws to poison you, or use the EX version to pull herself toward you! And the cherry on top? If she hits you with another poison attack while you are already poisoned, it causes a special staggered state that allows her to freely attack you even more.
  • Her Level 3, Claws of Ya Zi, may give JP's Interdiction a run for its money as the most terrifying super in the game. A.K.I readies her claws and begins striking the opponent's pressure points a la Fist of the North Star, complete with a disturbing x-ray shot of the opponent's ki pathways infected by her poison as they helplessly succumb to its effects, their muscles twitching uncontrollably before they explode in a Gory Discretion Shot. The Critical Art version (pictured) is even worse. As she strikes the opponent, they start getting entangled within the poisoned threads of her talons before she finishes wrapping them up as if she were a spider trapping someone in her web. She then delivers the final strike to the head to trigger the poison running through the opponent's body with a brief shot of the opponent's eyes rolling upwards in pure agony, casually walking away before swiftly lifting her hands up behind her head with a sadistic Slasher Smile and glowing, red eyes, resulting in the threads cutting them open like garrote wire, which in turn serves as the "detonator" to the poison as it creates an even bigger explosion from within their body.
  • Similar to JP, there's a marked difference in A.K.I.'s behavior in her level 3 compared to her Critical Art. In her level 3, she's playing with her food, toying with her opponent as she draws out the strikes and finishes with a dramatic flourish. But in the Critical Art, she makes the strikes immediately and restrains them right after, her only interaction with the opponent being a menacing Death Glare as she lands the final strike. She's done messing around; now, she just wants you dead.
  • A.K.I.'s taunts once again goes to show just how beyond fucked she is. One of them in particular has her testing one of her poisons on herself, causing her to briefly have a seizure; something she takes nothing but borderline orgasmic ecstasy in.
    A.K.I.: The master's prized poison... (Drinks the poison and starts convulsing from the effects) A PERFECT, BEAUTIFUL, MOST-BRILLIANTLY CRAFTED POISON~!
  • As it turns out, A.K.I.'s poison immunity didn't come naturally. Talking to her in World Tour has her reveal that she deliberately exposed herself to non-fatal poison doses to gradually build an immunity, complete with a picture of her younger self straining under the effects of said exposure.
  • As if her poison wasn't disturbing enough, even her Continue animation is unnerving. With the other fighters, choosing to continue has them either leap back up with renewed energy or pull themselves together to refocus. What does A.K.I. do? Stab herself with her own talons and use the pain as shots of adrenaline. Complete with her pained grunts as her body jerks itself back into alignment.
  • Her match win animation harkens back to Urien in Street Fighter V in that she relishes in Beating A Dead Player in the worst way possible. The entire animation is already uncomfortable as it shows A.K.I. crawling over her downed victim like a snake and then cuts straight back into terror as the camera moves to a 1st person view of the opponent as A.K.I. straight up lunges to deliver the finishing blow. The victory screen freeze frame holding on to her claws coming right for your throat as her face contorts into a psychotic, bugged-out Slasher Smile.
  • Her Arcade Mode story involves her successfully infiltrating JP's hideout and poisoning his security detail to death. When he refuses to accept her accusations of money laundering, the camera shifts to an extreme close-up of her demented grin as she prepares a dose of poison. After defeating him, A.K.I gives him a warning: don't interfere with her and her master F.A.N.G's plans, which are hinted to be F.A.N.G himself, and not JP, being the one to revive Shadaloo. She makes it very clear with her threat that she could have easily killed JP right then and there, but chose not to so as to abide by F.A.N.G's orders to their utmost absolute. Compared to his other defeats, which he just brushes off, JP is visibly shaken when he's at her mercy.
  • A.K.I's introduction bringing back F.A.N.G to the fold and what he plans behind the scenes and even in World Tour serves as a chilling reminder: When he is not acting like a Laughably Evil Fighting Clown like many of his appearances in V (which made him controversial to the fans), F.A.N.G is still one of the most terrifying remnants of Shadoloo and may easily outrank JP in sheer terror factor and planning, based on what A.K.I has shown to us.
• Akuma once again returns, and this time he's achieved a new level of terror and brutality. His battle intro is him simply Emerging from the Shadows, surrounded by an eerie, ghostly mist no matter what stage he's on. Every single one of his attacks connects with such impact that they feel as fatal and merciless as they look. Even worse, he now bears a much more noticeable resemblance to Oni, his alter-ego formed by the Satsui no Hado, while also adopting more from his appearance as Shin Akuma, indicating that he isn't holding back this time. Shadowy wisps of ghostly, spiritual energy now follow him during several attacks too, indicating he may have achieved some sort of connection with the dead. By far his most terrifying aspect, however, is his new animation for the Raging Demon, now pictured and makes both JP and A.K.I's Critical Arts pale in comparison. He becomes engulfed in shadows, and when he grabs the opponent he outright takes them to another dimension where he summons an entire fucking army of shadow doppelgangers to maim his helpless victim to death. After landing a few blows, he leaps into the sky as his shadow clones proceed to leap onto his opponent, dogpiling them and viciously assaulting them before the real Akuma stomps on their spine, breaking it cleanly in half and killing them in one fell swoop. And during all of this Akuma recites a mantra in an eerie, reverberating voice that sounds exactly like Oni.
  Usurp the heavens! And reach the summit! BECOME THE DEMON!!!
  • The story details behind Akuma's presence in 6 are also nightmarish. In the years following 3rd Strike, we learn that his obsession with ascending to the heavens and the corrupting influence of the Satsui no Hado has driven him to utterly insane lengths as he has now taken to carving statues out of the many forms of his opponents in order to continue testing his strength.

The Prequel Comic

• The prequel comic shows us just how bad Ken's situation turned out to really be. In the first chapter, he partners with Johann "JP" Petrovich in order to build a fighting arena for Nayshall. Then, while en route to their hotel, Ken and his colleague Albert Jackson (Kimberly's missing uncle) are attacked by unknown protesters and terrorists, and their vehicle is blown up with Albert still trapped inside. Things only get worse in the second chapter, as now Ken is being interrogated by none other than Chun-Li, who is still working with Interpol by this point. As it turns out, while Ken was unconscious, a deepfaked video had been posted of him providing support to an unknown terrorist faction... while JP and his assistant Kalima were in the midst of unveiling the arena, causing massive media backlash. He rushes to try and get to Mel, but Chun-Li throws him down and holds him at gunpoint, ordering him to be kept in custody for his own safety. Slowly, Ken pieces together that JP and Kalima may have been behind his fall from grace, and escapes custody, becoming a fugitive. He's now on the run, alone in Nayshall, looking for answers and trying to find his son, who's currently under Luke's protection.
  • For a good idea of just how evil JP might be, the third chapter sees him deliver a Sadistic Choice to Ken: activate several bombs attached to Ken's drones around Nayshall so that he can easily be framed as the terrorist JP has tried to label him as, or refuse and let a drone bomb placed under Mel's chair go off. In one fell swoop, JP has jumped up to one of the most cruel antagonists in the franchise, and proceeds to walk away from it with no one the wiser while Ken is left to flee and be shot on-sight.
• The final issue of the prequel comic shows just how dangerous and destructive a person like JP is. He apparently has managed to move from legitimate organization to legitimate organization, a clandestine figure that acts as a force of benevolence in developing areas only for those areas to become mired in chaos within six months of his involvement before he disappears again and moves on to his next target. He is a mastermind of the Bond Villain variety and to this point has done nothing but succeed in destabilizing every area he's drained financially without a stain on him. And whoever he has working for him has been able to mostly cover up his tracks, or at the very least make it hard to track between aliases.
• JP's cruel attempted murder of Kalima, who attempted to take him down by herself with a knife for the terrorist acts he committed on Nayshall. He casually grabs the knife, turns it on her while demonstrating he's far from the "old man" he portrays himself as, and then casually tells her as she bleeds out that her home nation is nothing but a nation of criminals now, one he'll exploit entirely for his own ends and then abandon to collapse once he no longer has use for it. She barely survives off-screen and heads up the Nayshall Resistance's most desperate plot yet to prevent this.

World Tour

• Throughout World Tour, local enemies will inhabit certain streets and areas, waiting to rush and beat you down if you go wandering in blindly, which isn't too much to think about because they're usually fairly weak or you don't access the more dangerous areas until you're around that level. Then you go to something like Metro City at night, and the back streets are filled with the Mad Gear Gang; watch the mini-map while you sprint through a dangerous area as upwards to a dozen enemies pursue you all at once like bats out of hell, aiming to cheap shot and swarm you 'til you go down if you don't run like crazy.
• Your first encounter with Juri in World Tour is not with her as a Master like most other characters, but as an enemy, as she suddenly appears to menace the Player and Bosch with full intent on murdering them both for the cash stolen from the Mad Gear Gang. It's only by curiosity's sake that she spares them after a relentless beatdown on the pair, dragging off Bosch to places unknown. It says a lot that a later hacker outright refers to Juri as an assassin, clearly not giving up her S.I.N. habits and using criminal activities as an excuse to beat the shit out of anyone she gets pointed at, and when you do get the chance to have her as a Master, she casually admits she does these sorts of jobs on the regular for a pretty penny and out of boredom.
• The shadows of Shadaloo strike again, attempting to seize control of underground fighting tournaments around the globe through the criminal underworld. Even as mere remnants remotely headed by JP, they still have enough Psycho Power to channel into test subjects to attempt to create another Super-Soldier — and Bosch is one unfortunate victim, becoming a hulking, berserker Blood Knight determined to fight until he drops as he charges through anyone in his path like a feral beast.
  • Even worse is the reason for it happening; that cash mentioned above was to insert Shadaloo-friendly remnants into a Nayshall fighting tournament for the sake of money laundering. Bosch stole it so he could instead hijack the tournament candidate spot for himself in hopes of helping the Nayshall Resistance overthrow JP. JP's response was to have Bosch dragged off, sentenced to a Fate Worse than Death as he undergoes a gradual Death of Personality via some seriously Body Horror experimentation (including a glowing, opened scar in the middle of his chest), and then letting him loose in his maddened state to suppress most possible tournament candidates. Bosch has some lucidity, and it plays into the Nayshall Resistance's plans of him performing a Heroic Sacrifice to try to kill JP, but the sheer Disproportionate Retribution is staggering.
• The player character, of all people, can be directly infused with Psycho Power by JP as part of enrolling under his tutelage. JP himself says they're lucky they turned out fairly well and stable; most people besides them and Bosch die. And while it means that the avatar has effectively become Bad Powers, Good People like Ed and Falke as it's an alternative to the spiritual powers throughout the series, it also means they're permanently given some semblance of JP's presence which could be inherited from Bison somehow, and one can only fear the implications of that.
• Kalima's plan? Rig the championship belt for the Nayshall Tournament with a bomb, have Bosch sweep the tournament, and then detonate it while he's next to JP. Bosch was aiming to fulfill his part in the plan before the game even started, which re-contextualizes all of his moody and distant actions as attempting to prevent making attachments he'd regret before what amounts to a Heroic Sacrifice. And then it completely fails; JP knew before the tournament happened because he checked the belt after catching the Avatar in the middle of their failure to disarm it, and then activates the bomb himself in the hands of Bosch's younger sister Yua because he wanted to see the outcome. Bosch's corpse is the only visibly dead character in the game, as a firm reminder of the sheer stakes involved with JP.
  • Even worse? This is the first Street Fighter game that averts Gory Discretion Shot and takes full advantage of what engine it runs on just to show you how brutal, gruesome, and horrific Bosch's death really is. His eyes are open and blank, and the entirety of his body is charred completely black, the ashes still visibly smoldering and with very noticeable burn marks all over his corpse. Anyone who's played some of Capcom's more horror-oritented games may equate Bosch's death with him being the victim of a B.O.W or a demon, or even a Darkstalker.
• The entire reason for all of this chaos, for terrorism, for murder, for effectively sealing Bosch's death warrant, and for ruining Ken's life? Greed. It's not just that JP is involved with money laundering, it's his primary goal. All of this shit was solely so JP could have more profits than he could ever know what to do with, to fulfill a carnal, nihilistic desire on his self-learned principle that if Humans Are Bastards, then he should be allowed to use his intelligence, charisma and Psycho Power to indulge in all the wealth he could ever want; Ken's involvement was yet another manipulation of bleeding all the possible profits from him before attempted disposal, and Nayshall as a nation was another stepping stone in the plan. Unlike Bison, who was a murderous lunatic hellbent on mass genocide and destruction for the sake of his own insatiable ego, JP is an entirely human desire wrapped inside a completely inhumane shell that just so happens to look like the nicest guy ever.
  • Even worse, as far as the game's concerned, JP's proverbial dirty laundry is still under lock-and-key; even with Li-Fen knowing about the money laundering now, no one can really oust him or usurp his public opinion. So when the player character proceeds to give him a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown within an inch of his life, it doesn't matter anyway; as far as the story shows, he gets away from this while pointing out to the player that the entire elaborate plot was All for Nothing.
  • The big reveal about JP's origins through following his mastery plotline. His claims that he's the successor of M. Bison? They're legitimate. He was once a former member of Shadaloo and served as one of Bison's financial advisors in his agenda of world domination. Given that Shadaloo is a syndicate that prides itself on Equal-Opportunity Evil, it's no surprise that someone as vile and wicked as JP would be connected to it, let alone one of its secret leaders. His sheer cunning and capability impressed the dictator so much that he granted JP the ability to use Psycho Power for his own purposes. Now, he has gathered the remnants of Shadaloo who were scattered after Bison's death, and reformed the organization into two fronts: Amnesia, a terrorist organization of hackers, and the Terra Network Partners, a public NGO that serves as a twisted mirror of Shadaloo publicly while still being evil behind closed doors.
  • The above reveal also re-contextualizes a particular major plot point in V. Remember how in Seth's story an unknown faction hired Juri to reclaim his artificial brain and the body it was stored in? That unknown faction were remnants of Shadaloo and S.I.N. And who was reorganizing them during that time? None other than JP. That's right: JP is behind the resurrection of Seth, and managed to use Juri as a pawn, knowing full well her hatred of Bison and his organization.
  • Those facts alone makes him a much more terrifying and competent villain than Bison ever was, especially because people like JP actually exist in real life.
  • Amidst all of this, the resistance is literally right outside JP's base of operations, and he has no clue about the bomb on the championship belt until he spots the Avatar in the belt's room trying to tamper with it. Either he genuinely doesn't realize Kalima is on his doorstep aiming to kill him — or he cares so little about their efforts and is consciously aware enough that he lets them try all they want to make sure they know they'll never succeed. The game doesn't answer to either interpretation, but it would be in-character for the latter.
• A.K.I. is a deranged sadist who manages to make Juri of all people look sane and reasonable. Her first interaction with the Avatar, first shown in her teaser trailer starts off innocuous enough, with them helping her out with her dropped pouches of medicine. Suddenly, she contorts her body in an unnerving manner as she gets right in the Avatar's face, force feeding them a pill of poison. As they start succumbing to the poison's effects, A.K.I. gleefully lists off the effects of the poison they were fed, capping it off with an utterly deranged laugh.
  A.K.I.: Ahahahaha! Some poisons can kill people in the thousands with that amount. Like botulinum toxin, it inhibits acetylcholine release causing loss of muscle tone, lethargy... (the poison starts to kick in) dizziness... visual impairment... heavy eyelids, intense thirst, loss of speech... vomiting, diarrhea, stomach distention, breathing difficulty, and... respiratory failure. (the Avatar collapses in pain) Aha... AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
• With A.K.I's arrival into World Tour, a familiar face also returns. That's right: F.A.N.G is back. Despite the fact that this time, he's taking more of a background role, his new look in this game shows that he definitely means business and is up to no good. Under the guise of "Fang Fei", he serves as a sort of intermediary for the player, and is looking into the remnants of Shadaloo, being especially interested in JP.