may be a oddball article considering that this is somewhat about the most well-known thing about street fighter, but i'm making it because this is my website. as you all know, and for those who don't know, these three men you see before you were originally named in order:
1. vega, 2. balrog, 3. M. bison
they still have these names in japan, but they ended up being named differently in everywhere else. this is because one of these characters, the boxer, is literally a mike tyson parody down to the name and capcom of america didn't want to risk a lawsuit, so they scrambled their names based on what's the most fitting. this lead to the street fighter community deciding to just give them catchall names for tournaments, but the name scramble ended up being canonized in SF6 so things are made worse.
shown above: refer to the ordered names.
that would be the end of the snapple cap-sized fact, but there's a little more than that to these. intricacies, even. and there's more name shenanigans in street fighter beyond these too!
exhibit B: the cruel-looking man you see above is named 'gouki' in japan, but ended up being named 'akuma' in everywhere. i do not know why his name was changed, but that's a thing.
exhibit C: the slim woman here wasn't even originally going to be named cammy white, but rather 'sarah'. they changed this at the last minute because of virtua fighter.
exhibit D: the blonde man here, ken, didn't have a last name originally. it was until the street fighter G.I. joe toyline where they had to give him one due to mattel's barbie already having a ken, hence, ken masters.
back to the topic at hand, there's a little more to this than just that one factoid. i'm unsure if any of this is true, but i find it interesting enough to document because it's a matter of cultural differences.
see, when capcom of america settled down to change the names of these three bosses, they gave vega to claw-which made sense because claw is clearly spanish. the more interesting thing though is dictator's name change, because they thought 'vega' sounded weak and that he needed a stronger name-hence, 'M. bison'. but in japan, vega holds celestial connotations because during this era japan thought naming things after stars was fucking awesome. that's interesting, right? now here's something i learnt recently:
in some peices of media [the live action film[...?] and the cartoon], ryu has a unofficial last name: 'hoshi'. combined together [iirc], it's supposed to mean 'star'-so effectively, if you were to go by ryu's unofficial full name and dictator's japanese name, the protagonist and the antagonist of street fighter are both named 'star'. something to think about.