Trivia / Tenchu

• Acting for Two:
  • Takeshi Kuwabara provides the voices of Lord Gohda, Mei-oh, Echigoya and others in the first game.
  • Greg Eagles provides the voices of both Suzaku and Lord Toda in Tenchu 2.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: UGO referred to Rikimaru as "Tenchu".
• Died During Production: Mary Kay Bergman (Lady Kagami) committed suicide 9 months before Tenchu 2: Birth of the Stealth Assassins was released.
• Franchise Killer: Shadow Assassins was received more positively by critics than Z was, but the fans were so incensed by the complete gameplay overhaul and Soft Reboot that the game tanked as the last major release in the series. Notably Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice was intended to be a revival as a Tenchu game originally, but branched off into its own intellectual property that plays more like director Hidetaka Miyazaki's other major franchises, leaving Tenchu dead in the water.
• Multiple Languages, Same Voice Actor: Infamously done in the first game, where most of the actors are clearly native Japanese speakers who voice their characters for both the English & Japanese dub; and clearly struggling to pronounce their English dialogue.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The initial setting was intended to be a futuristic New York City inspired by Judge Dredd and Batman (1989) starring a cop descended from ninja who fights crime. The sci-fi aspect was dropped to focus more on the ninja aspect, taking influence from the films of Akira Kurosawa.
  • The boss at the start of the checkpoint level in Stealth Assassins was supposed to be a little girl, Activision did not want any inhumane death sequences involving children and ordered the character to be aged up to get Sony's approval for a US release.
  • Shadow Assassins was meant to be the first of a trilogy which unfortunately never came to fruition, leaving the series on a massive (and probably never to be resolved) cliffhanger.

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