street fighter 2. arguably the most seminal game in what we know as fighting games today...and also the first one with a story that nobody knew what it even was, and many incramental details. yes, i'm making SF2's story a article on it's own because of the amount of retcons it has had over the years. it's had a long time coming. some of these i already covered before but, the rest will be here. this is also going to be another rambly article, which i find as fun as normal articles.
obviously, first thing is to look into is the game itself. the most notable thing i can think of is two things: bison being defeated by ryu was changed to him being fucking bitchslapped into the void by akuma out of nowhere to the point where it can be legally considered drive-by shooting, and a fortunately-retconned ending with cammy where bison confesses to her that he's actually in love with her despite the fact that she was kidnapped, set up, and he attempted to murder her-only really leaving a scar on her face as a result of his attempt. this also wound up being in the street fighter cartoon because the street fighter cartoon is not bound to anything, but also because iirc it took until new super street fighter 2 turbo HD remix deluxe featuring dante from the devil may cry series amiibo included for that retcon to be done, and it's generally considered canon from then on, probably because it was 2008 and they wanted to coinside with SF4 having decapre, a in-universe prototype clone for what became cammy. it took them 14 years to do it but thank fucking god. there's also the game, to my memory, being supposed to be set a year after 1991 or so only for capcom to realize that the game has the USSR flag listed and has russia still referred to as the USSR, which dissolved in december of 1991. they then immediately changed it to 1991.
the earliest thing i could find on anything else outside of the game is a album for SF2's soundtrack that had little descriptions and images for what happend to the characters after the games. with chun-li quitting being a cop [which is still phrased as her 'going back to being a normal girl' but really all of that just means she's dropping her badge since the one thing she sought out to do is done and over with to her knowledge] but still training to upkeep her body, guile going home and being a family man, zangief continuing to do things that would be normally considered animal cruelty, blanka going back to a normal life with his mother, balrog developping a drinking problem, vega having his mental problems worsen, sagat still sagatting, and bison promptly fucking off forever into the abyss where he may never appear again until 2008. or 2016. depending on if you think he was still dead during SF4 or not...or maybe it's zangief being a bit of a vigilante, vega going back to his mansion, chun-li lamenting her marriage potentional, and a traced-from-a-fist-of-the-north-star-panel image of a male pattern baldness-suffering M. bison sitting on a couch with a pre-capcom-establishing-that-the-dolls-exist woman snuggling him as he gets his psycho power measured by scientists.
shown above: where'd he get that girl anyway?
speaking of our friendly neighborhood red cyclone, zangief also has a incrament exclusive in a manga-a bit out of the scope of this article but this is about weird details in SF2 shut up, but the 'STREET FIGHTER II: RYU' manga has these little character bios and zangief's bio says that he's not actually russian at all. instead, he could be born siberian.
continuing with that thought process, in the same manga-trust me again this is relevant to this article-balrog has a dislike that's literally not listed anywhere-the specific detail that he doesn't like rap music. back to zangief, zangief has his own strange uncommonly listed dislike-strangely, beautiful women. that could mean three things. one of them is another rumor that's not as heavily circulating as the idea of rose being M. bison's good part of his soul, but still sticks to some people-the idea that zangief is gay. i have forgotten the specific details on what lead to this, but it was some jokey thing involving him and vega.
another thing that you might or might not know about is M. bison's general design, specifically the one thing brought up the most when it comes to his inspiration is riki-oh's washizaki, which is...incredibly clear when you look at him pre-alpha, and even at his potrait-even when he was redesigned in turbo, you can still pinpoint the exact chapter and page they traced for him. all they did to this man was make him red, give him a blue line running down his jacket [now black nowadays], and give him a belt to boot-but that's not all for bison himself, though. because he's also yasunori kato as seen in the historical-fantasy-novel-turned-anime named 'doomed megalopolis'-the cover of which akira yasuda also referenced for one of the posters for SF2. no, capcom did not cease their stealing of designs from other peices of media after this.
shown above: it's a little family!
shown above: remember to ask to copy homework!
and speaking of our friendly neighborhood sorcerer-dictator! there's something that i find funny with his design that's worth noting and also requires a historical tidbit to be spout and also ties directly into his inspos: see, before he was redesigned to have the shadaloo emblem on his hat instead, he had a star on it-obviously loaned over from kato and washizaki, but BECAUSE of their very japan-set sources, the star-emblem hat ends up having some funny implications for bison-the clearest one being that he's japanese. like, actually japanese not japanese-made. and a imperialist at that, which is very not bison for bison to be a japanese imperialist. also, while crossreferencing some of that info for M. bison with a book i have that's basically a history book on street fighter, i found and realized that M. bison was born out of the team just fucking winging it. i can't believe my favorite street fighter character was born out of sheer ''why don't we just make the most out-there shit ever'' and ended up shifting the entire direction of street fighter's tone and story as we know it.
since i already brought up a ending, let's talk endings too.
before the cleanup, ken's ending originally looked...silly. a crude drawing of eliza runs up to him and the wedding shot of them has ken grinning like he's 30 rather than 20.
shown above: sheesh.
chun-li's ending also makes something clear that i thought was only in street fighter alpha-maybe this is a translation thing, but bison always ran a drug trafficking organization-it's just that chun-li went after him specifically for the murder of her father. also, in the new challengers, you can literally decide how her life would go-either go back to being a woman without a job or keep being a cop...canonically, i think she did both.
a thing i also found interesting was that in guile's ending, guile reminds and asks bison if he remembers various things about him-but one of the things he named is cambodia, which implies more of a storied history between him, charlie and bison rather than ''guile and charlie were chilling only for charlie to get shot on sight by a shadaloo helicopter''. if my wishes for capcom to delve just a little into soul power's history including maybe showing us bison's master was awnsered, maybe my wishes for capcom to touch on that part of guile and bison's history will be awnsered too.
balrog's ending in championship edition also gives something that was somewhat unnoticed: balrog used to live in a ghetto. looking at vega's ending or anything about him however just makes me think about how he managed to join shadaloo or even accept the offer if M. bison doesn't look very conventionally attractive. maybe that mask is just to shield himself not only from harm but from people he deems ugly too. shit, i wonder what he even thinks of him? and bison's own ending just makes me wonder what the world under his rule actually looks like. also, his ending literally says that you helped him take over the world. i'd call that charity work.
in new challengers however, bison's ending mentions a ''ancient one'' that couldn't bear to challenge him. who is that even?
also, here's a image of balrog stating that he has no regrets in life.
a weird oddity i found is that...while everyone new has a ending too. akuma doesn't at all. or so i thought...because on TCRF, i easily found a real ending for him with text and everything. even his ending when you beat akuma as akuma has a oddity that is never brought up ever: you weren't even playing as akuma all this time, but rather a shadow of himself. like some fucked up ryu-kage situation.
shown above: twokuma.
moving onto the xbox 360 title, akuma's ending there too has a very interesting thing to note: after defeating bison, akuma verbally pisses on him, but one of his verbal pissing is something that could be interpetted as a observation rather than a ''my dick is bigger than yours'' sentiment: he states that bison allowed psycho power to take hold of himself rather than him mastering it.
balrog's ending in the funny long named version of SF2 also shows that he quit boxing to live a life of luxury...until he gambled it away and became a broke boxer again. if this is a cycle with him, his life must be miserable.
also, chun-li used to be orange. maybe this is her shiny form.
shown above: maybe she's not orange but tangarine?
this article was made on august 30th, which is street fighter's anniversary date-making the series 36 years old by the time i started this. this was a utter coincidence, but it's neat. happy birthday, street fighter!