See also:
- Alternative Character Interpretation: Is Shadow Lady:
- Chun-Li who was captured and replicated by Shadaloo?
- A Chun-Li who was forcibly captured and converted into a brainwashed Cyborg?
- A Super Prototype programmed with Chun-Li's original moves alongside with new ones?
- Designated Hero: The game's subtitle is "Clash of Super Heroes", but it includes Venom who is an Anti-Hero.
- Fridge Brilliance: The Marvel secret characters represent other Marvel heroes/villains: Gold War Machine is one to Iron Man (since he has gold armor), Red Venom represents Carnage, and Orange Hulk represents The Thing.
- Harsher in Hindsight:
- Considering Captain Commando only appeared in this game and the next one, Onslaught's comeback when he is confronted by Cap is darkly prophetic:Your return will be short-lived, Captain.
- Likewise for Jin's ending where he dies and Ryu expresses hope he'll be back, considering he only appeared in two more games after this (and the second game was a cameo in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3's Days of Future Past stage on a wanted poster showing he had been killed).
- Considering Captain Commando only appeared in this game and the next one, Onslaught's comeback when he is confronted by Cap is darkly prophetic:
- Memetic Mutation:
- Some of Spider-Man's lines, such as "One for J.J.!" and "Do your job!" (or alternatively, "DO YOUR GODDAMN JOB!") are minor memes in the community, continuing on from his debut appearance in Marvel Super Heroes.
- War Machine's "HERE'S MY SUNDAY BEST!"
- Recreating the game's flyer art with other crossovers, be they official ones or one's own dream crossover, is a popular concept.
- Most Wonderful Sound: The metallic reverb of Hiryu's Cypher. (SCHWING!) Though not new to anyone familiar with his previous playable outings, Hiryu's inclusion in this game helped make the sound effect memorable among a much wider audience.
- Narm: Chun-Li's ending, where Charlie saves Chun-Li, but the way he kicks Bison off-screen looks more funny than dramatic. The other endings have varying degrees of Narm too, just watch.
- Nightmare Fuel:
- The Final Boss is Onslaught, one of the most dangerous villains in Marvel's pantheon. After defeating his first form, all goes quiet for a moment before the ground starts to quake, and you're greeted with this◊! "NO ONE IS SAFE!", indeed!
- Shadow Lady is Chun-Li forcibly turned into a brainwashed cyborg for Shadaloo in retaliation for repeatedly foiling their operations. They transformed her into their top assassin, complete with a new name and a Restraining Bolt added to her programming so she wouldn't rebel, which essentially destroyed her former cheerful personality. While the player is spared from viewing the transformation of her into a machine, the process involved is implied to have been gruesome, what with mindwiping her into their minion and replacing her human body with cybernetics.
- The Final Boss is Onslaught, one of the most dangerous villains in Marvel's pantheon. After defeating his first form, all goes quiet for a moment before the ground starts to quake, and you're greeted with this
- Polished Port:
- The Dreamcast version is more or less arcade-perfect. It also lets you unlock the secret characters for permanent use, plus Onslaught.
- The version included in Marvel vs. Capcom Origins is possibly even more arcade perfect than the Dreamcast version, features extremely high quality rollback netcode, and it allows players to unlock shortcuts to select the secret characters.
- Porting Disaster: The PlayStation version, while considered to be an improvement in comparison to the PS1 ports of its predecessors, is an enigma. Damningly, it lacks the tag team combat (bar a special mode where it is allowed, but players must use the exact same team) and suffers from cut animation frames and fairly gratuitous loading times*, features that largely make it not a straight port of the arcade version. That said, it does make a valiant attempt to compensate for this, such as the ability to play as Onslaught and the version of Mega Man with the Magnetic Shockwave from Mega Man's ending, extra colors, being able to start the match in alternate forms (i.e. having Ryu start as Ken or Akuma), the presence of an art gallery and ending viewer, and the very unique ability to cancel special moves and even Hyper Combos into Hyper Combos. In spite of all these neat features, many of which are unavailable in any other version, most players tend to completely ignore it for the arcade, Dreamcast, and Origins versions due to the dealbreakers that are the main changes.
- Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: This game almost singlehandedly did this for its Final Boss Onslaught, who was previously regarded near-unanimously by fans as The Scrappy due to how hard Executive Meddling shoved his titular Crisis Crossover story down the throats of readers back in 1996. Of those fans who remember Onslaught fondly, most were influenced by this game rather than the actual story about him.
- Tear Jerker:
- Hulk's ending, where Cap sacrifices himself to save the world, with the rest of the X-Men eulogizing him. Though this is sad enough, it's the frakking music that makes it worse.
- Jin's ending, where he does the exact same thing is even worse when you realize he only appeared in one more game as a playable character. In Shadow Lady's ending, she and Shadow turn him into a cyborg after he was mortally wounded by Bison.
- Shadow Lady's ending. Although this What If? version of Chun-Li manages to break free of Shadaloo's control and does a Heel–Face Turn, she can never become human again as Shadaloo forcibly cyborgized and converted her into a brainwashed minion.
- Unexpected Character: Jin qualifies, as many gamers were unaware of his existence prior to this game. Strider Hiryu and Captain Commando also qualify.
