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Trivia / Soulcalibur VI

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    A-D 
  • Acting for Two: Largely avoided in both languages, with the handful of cases present usually falling under Significant Double Casting.
    • As Nightmare is Siegfried possessed by the will of Soul Edge, they understandably are voiced by the same actors: Nobuyuki Hiyama in Japanese, and Kirk Thornton in English.
    • In English, Wendee Lee voices Xianglian during her appearances in the story in addition to her role as Xianghua. Fittingly, they're long-lost sisters and two very important people in Kilik's life.
    • Due to a Role Reprise from her home series, Kira Buckland voices 2B in addition to Talim.
  • All-Star Cast:
  • Awesome, Dear Boy: Motohiro Okubo jumped at the chance to lead Project Soul after Masaki Hoshino left, due to the passion the members of the team had for the series and he didn't want them to lose it.
  • Content Leak:
    • Months before the character was unveiled, Azwel's name and general role in the story was leaked by a 4chan user claiming to have worked on the game files. The same user also correctly confirmed that Raphael was flagged as a playable character in the files, when certain other supposed leakers were suggesting he wasn't going to make the cut this time.
    • Namco themselves accidentally confirmed the inclusions of Cervantes and Raphael by sending the wrong build to a tournament in Melbourne, which included the two before their intended announcement. They ended up shutting the whole thing down and taking all the videos off YouTube to prevent it from leaking out, but by that point it was too late. They also had a bad habit of uploading trailers to YouTube early and not properly marking them as private only for them to be pulled quickly, but YouTube being what it is, copies were already everywhere.
    • Amy and Cassandra were leaked in the code to be the remaining two DLC fighters after 2B came out. Indeed, Amy and Cassandra would eventually be given official announcements, Amy at Evo Japan 2019 in February and Cassandra at Evo 2019 in August.
    • Six codenames, specifically Stone, Yell, Star, Snow, Reptile, and Yellow, were datamined later on after the 1.11 update, all taking up DLC character slots that haven't been announced yet. It's widely believed these are placeholders for Season 2.
  • Creator Backlash: A minor case; Okubo expressed regret that Tira's announcement as DLC wasn't handled as well as it could've been following the backlash that she wasn't in the base game.
  • Dawson Casting: Despite the Sequel Gap, many voice actors from both sides have reprised their roles, but there are some roles that are examples of this, though it isn't a bad thing:
    • Japanese
      • Talim is the youngest playable female character in the game at 15, but her Japanese voice actress was 42 at the time of the game's release, making her the oldest compared to the other Japanese voice actresses for the playable characters.
      • With the reveal of Amy in February 2019, she now is most likely the youngest playable female character in the game. Her Japanese voice actress, Hitomi Nabatame, is the same age as Talim's, except a few months younger, making her the second oldest voice actress in the game.
      • As of August 2019, we now gave the crown to Cassandra. Though the character is 21 (given the chronology and details provided in past character biographies), her voice actress, Reiko Takagi, was 45 at the time of Soulcalibur VI's release and was roughly four months out from her 46th birthday when Cassandra was announced as a playable character. While Cass is towards the younger end of the age pool, her VA is actually the oldest of all the female seiyuu present so far. Additionally, her VA is older than Sophitia's, though she made Cassandra convincingly sound like the younger sister she is to Sophitia. note 
    • English
      • Siegfried's English voice is provided by Kirk Thornton in this game. Siegfried is roughly 19 in Soulcalibur VI, while Thornton was 62 at the time of the game's release (even giving quite the impression). The gap between Siegfried and Thornton is approximately 43 years. By contrast, Roger Craig Smith (Siegfried's previous voice actor) is almost two whole decades younger than Thornton.
      • Xianghua's English voice is reprised by Wendee Lee, who returned after a gap of ten years and was 58 at the time of the game's release (and many would say she sounds pretty convincing too!), while Xianghua is in her teens in this game (16 according to the original Soulcalibur), with the gap between her and her voice actress's age being over 40 years.
      • Julie Ann Taylor's return as Hilde makes for a downplayed example. With the negation of the 17-year Time Skip introduced in V, the princess of Wolfkrone is presumably back to being 18, the same age she was during her IV debut. When the Sequel Gap between IV and VI is factored in, however, that means Taylor, who was 53 at the time she recorded her lines for the character (and a few months away from her 54th birthday when Hilde's trailer dropped), is voicing a character approximately 35 years younger. And like Xianghua above, she sounds just as youthful as she did over a decade ago.
  • Development Gag:
    • One piece of artwork◊ from Soulcalibur depicted Nightmare riding on a Hellish Horse, but his not-so-noble steed never appeared alongside him in the game proper or any installment thereafter. Here, Nightmare conjures up a phantasmal unicorn somewhat reminiscent of said demonic creature for an animal-assisted mauling in his Critical Edge.
    • Another piece of artwork◊ from Soulcalibur depicted an upbeat young woman carrying a double saber as her weapon, which was a possible newcomer that never saw the light of day. Twenty years later, the idea of a double saber would indeed be introduced through newcomer Grøh, albeit as a male character with a decidedly less upbeat look to him. Considering just how much his weapon resembles hers, it's hard not to imagine that they looked back at some old concepts when developing the character.
  • Doing It for the Art:
    • As explained above, Motohiro Okubo immediately took up leading Project Soul to make VI not for any monetary reason, but because the other members had such passion for the series and he didn't want it all to disappear, which would render all that hard work worthless. This is especially notable in that Okubo had no prior experience with the Soul series at all, only co-producing Tekken 7 with Harada. Said passion definitely shows considering how much effort and dedication is clearly being put into the game to revitalize the series once again. The Awesome Art, Awesome Music, and Visual Effects of Awesome are all products of a team putting so much into a game that was once considered dead.
    • CD Projekt RED, rather than just signing off the character for an easy paycheck, actually worked with Project Soul to rebuild Geralt's style from the ground up to fit the fighting game genre while staying true to the character's style.
      Sebastian Kalemba: Our role was making sure Geralt in Soulcalibur VI moves, feels and plays like Geralt in The Witcher 3. However, since movement time, display, perspective and general responsiveness are very different in a fighting game, we had to go back to the drawing board and reinvent the way Geralt behaves in certain situations.
    • One really must admire how much attention to detail went into making 2B play properly as a fighter, with many of her moves being adapted from NieR: Automata without a hitch. Notably, a common argument against her inclusion was that her over-the-top, completely different style of play would make it impossible for the team to do justice, but they did.
  • Dueling Games: With Dead or Alive 6. Both games are 3D fighters that are the sixth numbered installment of their franchises, both coming off Sequel Gaps since 2012, both from series well-known for Fanservice, and both are touted as their series' major comebacks. A major point where they diverge comes in the form of said fanservice — Dead or Alive 6 chose to dramatically scale back its sex appeal whereas Soulcalibur VI instead fully embraced it as a core part of its identity. In terms of sales, acclaim and general recognition, Soulcalibur VI won out easily.

    F-K 
  • Fandom Nod: A common theory was that the Assassin character(s) in Soulcalibur II was a disguised Hwang due to sharing his moveset. Somewhere between this trope and Ascended Fanon, Seong Mi-na's story shows Hwang in a disguise that looks exactly like Assassin.◊
  • Fan Nickname:
  • Flip-Flop of God: Motohiro Okubo said the theme of the game is "reboot" early on after the announcement, but as the game appeared to very closely follow the original Soulcalibur, it caused much debate in the fandom as to whether or not it even is a reboot or a simple retelling, culminating with Okubo stating in a later interview that he wasn't sure if "reboot" was the right word. When the game finally released, this turned out to be mostly true... except Zasalamel's secret final chapter unambiguously confirms that VI is indeed a reboot. Then, if there was still any doubt, Cassandra's epilogue makes it even more clear that this is not the same timeline as the old games. (Or, more accurately, events are set to diverge significantly from what was seen in II onward going forward.)
  • Franchise Killer: Project Soul's actually making an attempt to defy this and redeem the series, but it was stated by Okubo that should Soulcalibur VI fail to meet a satisfactory sales goal, it would be the last game ever made. Fortunately, this was avoided and Namco reported the game as successful, likely saving the franchise that Soulcalibur V nearly killed. The fact that VI got a second season, announced after EVO 2019 hosted the biggest Soulcalibur tournament in series history, likely indicates that series is in good health.
  • God Never Said That:
    • It was echoed through the community that Okubo hated the idea of 2B being in the game and that she was ruled out as a future DLC guest. In reality, Okubo was annoyed that one player (Kayane) got a bunch of people on Twitter to spam his account with requests for her, but the character herself was never ruled out at all. Sure enough, 2B would be the second DLC character revealed for the game and the first post-launch DLC character.
    • Okubo was often quoted on saying that VI would be the most content-packed game of any Soulcalibur, even more than III, and many were disappointed when that wasn't the case. What he actually said was that it'd have the most story content of any game in the series, and that much is true, as there is far more story in this game than any previous entry.
    • A common citation used by those who didn't think VI was a true reboot was that Okubo once said that he wasn't sure if "reboot" was the "right word." Thus, they thought he was backing out or that it was misunderstood what he said. However, he made it explicitly clear the game was a reboot well beforehand, calling it the theme, and was sticking to it. What he was likely referring to is that this is an Alternate Timeline from the original games, and that factors into the story itself. As in, the old games are canon, in their own timeline. Zasalamel receives visions from his future self—likely his OT self—that leads him to abandon being a Death Seeker and instead to guide humanity to a bright future (a plan that Zasalamel originally didn't turn to until IV). Then, in Cassandra's Soul Chronicle, a rift opens up at the Shrine of Eurydice, whereupon Cassandra discovers the OT version of herself, having gone mad from being trapped in Astral Chaos. Once she's regained some of her sanity, OT!Cassandra warns her present-day self of the future to Set Right What Once Went Wrong. In fairness to this one, no one had any idea of these things back then, and VI looked to closely follow the old games without deviation, and thus fans took the simplest explanation at face value, even if that didn't end up being the right one. It might even be a case of Lying Creator overlapping with Exact Words, considering that it's technically accurate to say that the old games are still canon even if not in the same timeline, since they are having an impact on the new timeline.
  • I Knew It!:
    • From the beginning, it was speculated the series would go back in time following the backlash of Soulcalibur V as a way to bring the old characters back, which gained more and more traction over time. When Soulcalibur VI was finally revealed, that was indeed the case.
    • Geralt of Rivia from The Witcher was one of the top picks as the potential guest character for the game. It was later confirmed in March of 2018 he would indeed appear in the game, even getting to share the cover with series posterboy Mitsurugi.
    • An odd example in the case of Siegfried's inclusion. Being one of the main characters of the series, in terms of both recognizability and integrality to the narrative, most fans assumed he'd be returning for VI. However, a smaller portion of the fandom expressed doubt because, technically speaking, Siegfried had already been revealed to be on the roster (as Nightmare), perhaps not realizing that the original Soulcalibur had both characters as separate fighters long before their split in III.
    • Like Geralt, 2B was a very highly requested DLC character, and she became the first post-launch character added as DLC.
    • The 3/11/19 stream that covered more information for the then-upcoming Amy confirmed she and Viola were one and the same, which was originally Jossed in an attempt to pull a plot twist later in the original timeline (had the story been allowed to continue from where the previous installment left off).
    • This kind of happened in regards to Cassandra. It was a fairly recurring idea to have the playable Cassandra be from the original timeline as—according to the lore—Cassandra fell through a wormhole into Astral Chaos after being knocked out by Sophitia sometime during IV. Cassandra's character trailer beginning with her narration set over a hazy shot of Astral Chaos only added fuel to the fire. In the actual game, the Cassandra that's playable is the new timeline version — but the original timeline version appears in her Chronicle, having gone mad from a combination of her time in Astral Chaos and Sophitia's death. After fighting and being defeated by her present-time counterpart, Cassandra regains enough of her senses to tell her VI incarnation what will happen in the future and entrusts her to Set Right What Once Went Wrong.
  • Irony as She Is Cast: Hwang is The Not-Love Interest to Seong Mi-na despite the Ship Tease between them in Mi-na's Soul Chronicle, and they aren't anything more than friends. Which is kinda funny, seeing how Hwang's first voice actor Lucien Dodge is married to Seong Mi-na's voice actress Erica Mendez in real life. Completely coincidental, but hilarious.
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    L-R 
  • Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition: The game comes in Deluxe and Collector's Editions. The Deluxe Edition has the game in a metal case with a voice box that has four announcer quotes, a physical soundtrack, and the season pass. The Collector's Edition comes with everything from Deluxe Edition, along with an art book and a Sophitia figurine.
  • Lying Creator: Zig-zagged. Okubo stated the theme of the game is "reboot", which caused one half to take this as confirmation that the game is a Continuity Reboot, and the other half to think it's merely a Soft Reboot and a Revision, but still fully in-continuity. It seemed that Okubo swung towards the latter, when he said that he wasn't sure if "reboot" was the right word, especially as the game appeared to stick very closely to the events as they were originally told. When the game was released, the game indeed changed very little from the original, which combined with Okubo's backtracking, seemingly debunked the idea that this a reboot and the "New Timeline" was just an idea made up by those who believed it. But Zasalamel's secret final chapter confirms beyond doubt that Soulcalibur VI is a hard reboot as originally described. The epilogue of Cassandra's Soul Chronicle hammers it home even further.
  • Milestone Celebration:
    • Marking the twentieth anniversary of Soulcalibur hitting arcade stores, Soulcalibur VI is a reboot that very fittingly is based on what is widely considered to be the most classic game in the series. It was even confirmed that Project Soul chose this era to begin with because it was effectively the beginning of the series launch into the mainstream (though not technically the beginning overall) and the point that defined the series as a whole.
    • The announcement of Season 2 (August 4, 2019) came just one day shy of the 20th anniversary of the original Soulcalibur's home console release on the Dreamcast (August 5, 1999).
  • The Original Darrin: Nightmare in the Japanese version is voiced by Nobuyuki Hiyama, who last played him in 2002's Soulcalibur II. A Justified Trope, since Hiyama continued to voice Siegfried in all appearances thereafter and, this being a reboot of the Soulcalibur era (where Siegfried served as Soul Edge's host), he's also donning the mantle of Nightmare once again.
  • The Other Darrin: Not surprising given the Sequel Gap and some characters having been absent for a decade, some characters have been recast on both sides of the Pacific.
    • Japanese
      • Xianghua is no longer voiced by Ryoko Shintani, and instead is now voiced by Aya Suzaki.
      • Taki isn't voiced by Sachiko Kojima anymore either; instead she's now voiced by Nanako Mori, an otokoyaku (male role) actress in Takarazuka musicals, just like Nanaho Katsuragi, Setsuka's first Japanese voice actress.
      • Seong Mi-na is not reprised by Sanae Kobayashi, and instead the role is handled by Chinatsu Akasaki.
      • Cervantes is not reprised by Jin Urayama, and instead the role is taken over by Hiroshi Shirokuma.
      • Setsuka now has Yo Taichi as her voice actress in Nanaho Katsuragi's stead.
      • Instead of Naoki Imamura reprising the role, Hwang's role is taken over by Subaru Kimura.
    • English
      • Mitsurugi is not voiced by Ed Cunningham this time around, instead played by Ray Chase. note 
      • Sophitia is now voiced by Erica Lindbeck, who replaced Eden Riegel (credited as "Claudia Lenz") from Soulcalibur III and IV.
      • Nightmare, who is confirmed to once again be Siegfried in this game, isn't voiced by Roger Craig Smith either, with Kirk Thornton now providing their voices.
      • Talim is not reprised by Kate Higgins, with Kira Buckland instead taking over the role. Higgins is in the game, though; she's been recast to Tira.
      • Seong Mi-na isn't reprised by Erika Lenhart; Erica Mendez now voices her.
      • Tira is not reprised by Alison Lees-Taylor and is now voiced by Kate Higgins, the previous voices of Talim and Natsu.
      • As far as NPCs go, Xianglian—or rather, an illusion of her—appeared back in Soulcalibur IV, voiced by Michelle Ruff (who also voiced Kamikirimusi). Here, Xianglian is instead voiced by the same actress who portrays her younger sister Xianghua, Wendee Lee. Humorously enough, Ruff herself is still present as part of this game's voice cast, voicing a handful of NPCs including the swindling merchant Lyla.

    S-Z 
  • Sequel Gap:
    • VI released in October 2018, nearly seven years after V was released in January 2012. This makes it the longest gap between mainline SC games in series history.
    • Additionally, VI is tonally much more of a sequel to the games before V than the Soft Reboot that game attempted, with the last of said games being IV in July of 2008.
  • Talking to Himself:
    • Siegfried and Nightmare are both voiced by Nobuyuki Hiyama and Kirk Thornton, justified by the latter being the Soul Edge-possessed version of the former. Furthermore, Thornton's original "Veteran Knight" custom voice from V returns as well.
    • Also in the English dub, Talim and 2B are both voiced by Kira Buckland, the latter reprised from NieR: Automata.
  • Trolling Creator:
    • At the Game Awards in December 2017, Katsuhiro Harada came out first, with everyone thinking it was an announcement of something related to the Vaporware Tekken X Street Fighter or Tekken Mobile. However, when the man next to Harada, Motohiro Okubo, finished talking, he had five words to say before they announced the trailer: "Do Your Souls Still Burn?"
    • At Evo 2019, Okubo trolled the fanbase once more remarking "Every journey has an end" after revealing Cassandra's trailer, implying that all support for the game would cease. This was not helped by the reaction from the audience, especially considering the lack of information about future content up until that point. Okubo then showed one more video as a "thank you" to the fans... which turned out to be the trailer for a second season of DLC complete with reworked game mechanics and four more characters. The "end of the journey" was really referring to the end of Season 1, much to the fans' relief.
  • Troubled Production: Not a whole lot of solid details are out, but it's known that the road from development to release and beyond was a very bumpy one. It's stated that the game began development sometime in 2014, which was the same year that Lost Swords was active (to the fans' dismay) and it was likely that the plans for VI were there but on the backburner. The original lead on the team, Masaki Hoshino, left sometime in 2017 after Pachislot failed, and there were several unnamed producers who took his place before leaving too, leading to current head Motohiro Okubo to step up and get the game made. Keep in mind that Okubo only produced Tekken 7, and had no prior experience with Soulcalibur. However, he didn't want to see the series die, nor did he want the passionate members of Project Soul to be without jobs, so he took charge. The game was finished through 2017 and 2018 on a modest budget, and things went relatively smoothly from there. However, Okubo went on record saying that if VI didn't perform well enough, that Namco would pull out of the series, and they were only barely convinced to greenlight this game to begin with. This wasn't a lie, as back when the game launched, Okubo and the team didn't expect a Season 2 to be greenlit. Fortunately, the game performed well enough that the series will continue; Namco openly reported it as successful and having helped raise their value, followed by their approval of a second season.
  • What Could Have Been:
    • Soulcalibur VI was planned many years back, but this was when V head Daishi Odashima was in charge. Back when Soulcalibur V was announced, it was also announced this would be the start of a new series, and in fact had stated there was going to be VI, VII, VIII, and IX. That being said, the plan was that all games afterwards would've followed that game's status quo, which would've resulted in Soulcalibur VI looking very different from the one we actually got. This being a Continuity Reboot instead of a direct sequel to the previous game, it's anyone's guess as to what Odashima's vision of VI would've been like.
    • Okubo wanted 2P costumes in the game just as how all previous games had them, but Project Soul had to cut this particular corner due to constraints.
    • Noctis Lucis Caelum appeared as a Guest Fighter in Tekken 7. A common response to his surprise inclusion was that, as with several of the other new additions to the T7 cast, Noctis tonally clashed with the general atmosphere of Tekken, perhaps the most out of anyone. Many noted that his sword-based fighting style, use of magic, and Teleport Spam would've made him more fitting as a Soulcalibur guest than a Tekken one. Okubo implied that the only reason Noct wasn't a guest in Soulcalibur VI was because Tekken 7 was out first and they already had the rights to use Noct for that period, so he was put there instead of here to make sure it wasn't wasted, with Geralt of Rivia chosen as the VI guest instead. It's anyone's guess as to if Noct would be duking it out with the Soulcalibur cast instead of Geralt if Soulcalibur VI were announced just a little bit earlier.
    • Given his prominence in the story mode and the artwork (complete with a new look), and how reportings of unique moves belonging to him have been found as used by NPCs have turned up, it's a pretty fair bet that Lizardman was intended to be on the initial roster but was likely cut due to time constraints. It's widely expected that he'll turn up as future DLC, for that reason.
    • Additionally, there is the fact that Amy, Edge Master, Cassandra, and Hwang appear in the Soul Chronicle story mode with updated appearances and unique voices (the first three even being reprised by their current voice actors). There's a very good chance that they may have been planned for the base roster at one point, but couldn't make it. Amy and Cassandra would eventually make the jump to playable status, with Cassandra's announcement also coinciding with the reveal of a second season of DLC content which included the return of Hwang as a playable character.
  • Word of God:
    • In an interview with Kayane, Motohiro Okubo — the producer of both Soulcalibur VI and Tekken 7 — noted that Noctis, who was a guest character in the latter, would have been a better fit for Soulcalibur VI, but that Tekken 7 was made first.
    • Okubo also acknowledged that many have indeed noticed VI being filled to the brim with Hotter and Sexier fanservice compared to the already fanservice-heavy older games and especially so compared to the Tamer and Chaster V (some websites like Kotaku, Polygon and Fandom even having complained about the "objectification"). He stated that this wasn't made to be their focus, but rather it was done in an effort to be true to the characters as they were created to be.
    • According to Okubo, there were no plans for a second season of DLC when the game was released. Thankfully, the game's critical and commercial success plus the strong support of the community gave Project Soul the go-ahead from Bandai Namco to continue supporting the game with new content.
  • You Sound Familiar:
    • Kate Higgins does this a third time, having voiced Talim in III and IV and then Natsu in V. She now voices Tira, but doesn't reprise Talim who's returning in the same game for whatever reason (perhaps a decision on the director's part to avoid a plot-unjustified case of Talking to Himself).
    • D.C. Douglas did a custom voice in IV and returns in VI as the voice of Pod 042, assisting Guest Fighter 2B.

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