What makes a good fighting game? The fighting system, crisp moves, precise hit detection? How far down the list would you place a game’s story? As a kid, I played hundreds of hours of Street Fighter 2, Mortal Kombat and Killer Instinct with my only knowledge of their story coming from a paragraph or two in the instruction manual. There were all these cool ninjas and sumo wrestlers and robots that I could play as, so who’s got time for a story? I was more than happy taking these characters and creating my own.
With every subsequent game, and every promotional comic and tie-in movie, we learned a little more about the surprisingly rich worlds created for fighting games. Most of the time, the overarching narrative is quite coherent. The problems arise when trying to fit in the more unusual characters. Sometimes, a game’s roster will feel pretty homogenous, except for that one special fighter which stands out from the pack. A comedy character might be a lot of fun to play, but how do you make him fit in your story?
Some companies have gotten pretty creative over the years, and that’s why we wanted to pay homage to the more outlandish creations we could find. These 25 ridiculous backstories are sometimes funny, sometimes absurd, and sometimes unbelievable, but they never make a lick of sense. We did learn one thing through all of this: When it comes to getting karate masters, aliens, animals and even basketball players to fight with each other, any excuse is a good one.
25 Kazuya's Father Threw Him Off A Cliff At Age 5 To Make Him Tougher
Kazuya Mishima, of Tekken fame, was but a young boy when he got into a fight with his father over something trivial like… his father slaying his mom? Ouch. His father thought his son was too weak at the time to confront him. After all, Kazuya was only five at the time.
His solution? Throw the kid off a cliff in hope of making him stronger.
It worked, kind of: despite breaking every bone in his body, Kazuya – who once again, was five – made a deal with the devil to survive and get back at his father. Not necessarily “hilarious”, just over the top.
24 Blanka Survives A Plane Crash, Turns Green And Learns To Control Electricity
Street Fighter’s Blanka has a backstory which teaches us his real name: Jimmy. Poor Jimmy was traveling on a plane as a little boy, apparently by all by himself. When the plane crashed because of a lighting strike, Jimmy survived but had to adapt to the jungle. Eating a bunch of chlorophyll-rich plants turned him green, but nothing ever explains why his hair turned bright orange, or why his claws grew like that of a lion, or why he can produce electricity like an eel. The Western translation claims he gained that from the lightning which hit his plane, though it was never made official by Capcom.
23 Roger's Wife, A Kangaroo, Cheats With A Dinosaur
Roger from Tekken is a kangaroo fighting in a martial arts tournament, which is pretty ridiculous in itself. The fact that we know about his private life makes it even weirder. We know he has a wife and a son, and that they are all highly intelligent due to a genetic experiment. They have a tough but loving family life, though Roger’s wife sometimes gets involved with Alex, a boxing dinosaur (we will definitely get to him later on). When the family members are dissatisfied, they uppercut each other with tremendous force through the roof of their house.
22 Amingo Is Just A Cactus Out For Revenge
Created for Marvel vs Capcom 2, Amingo is a member of a race of plant people. Really, he’s just a fat cactus man, who went on a journey because a cursed wind started destroying his people.
The only reason why he’s picking a fight with a bunch of X-Men is because they happen to be standing in the way.
This backstory is not funny at all; it’s just a classic story of a man out for revenge. It does become funny, however, when you realize that the John Wick-type doing all the revenging is a chubby cactus in a sombrero.
21 Voldo Really Likes His Old Master
Are you ready for a really weird one? Because Soul Calibur’s Voldo has it all covered. Voldo is the guardian of his old master’s tomb, where he has been living underground since he was a young man, protecting the riches buried along with his master’s corpse. Living underground made him blind, deaf, and insane. He sometimes hears his old master’s voice commanding him to search for more treasures, like the Soul Edge. Also, his old master was really into leather and whips (and other stuff, I’m sure you understand), so Voldo has decided to keep that theme going.
20 Mayor Mike Haggar Dispatches Beat Downs In The Streets Of His Own City
Mike Haggar appeared in many of Capcom’s fighting series, like Saturday Night Slam Masters and Marvel vs Capcom, but his story is always the same. Haggar is the mayor of Metro City, who also happens to be a wrestler by night. He’s what would happen if Jesse Ventura had never retired. The other difference is that when things go bad in his city, Mike Haggar will actually go down in the streets and beat up some punks by himself, making him a million times more effective than Rudy Giuliani or Rob Ford ever were.
19 Mokap Took A Wrong Turn And Ended Up In The Outworld
Mokap, from Mortal Kombat, does not just look lame. His story shows that he is exactly as clueless as he looks. A friend and training partner of Johnny Cage, Mokap also works in the movie industry, but as a motion capture actor. His only problem: he keeps ending up in the Outworld during Mortal Kombat tournaments and he has absolutely no idea why. A perfect example of being at the wrong place at the wrong time, Mokap is a reluctant Kombatant whose biography specifies that he is just lost and doesn’t really know why he’s repeatedly transported in another dimension.
18 Heihachi Keeps A Grizzly Around
Kuma is another animal which can fight, a staple of the Tekken series. Unlike Alex and Roger, he is not a genetic experiment: Kuma is just a regular bear who was taken in as a cub by Heihachi Mishima, who was feeling lonely after throwing his son off a cliff. Kuma understands and speaks Japanese, and he was also taught to fight:
I guess a talking grizzly just isn’t scary enough.
Despite his taste for human flesh, Mishima still kept him around as a bodyguard, because at this point, if you’re going to take stupid risks, you might as well go all the way.
17 Abigail Makes Car Noises To Comfort Himself
Let’s start with something completely absurd. Street Fighter newcomer Abigail has a story which manages to be both surreal and completely mundane. A former criminal, Abigail wanted to walk the straight path by indulging his passion for cars and opening a garage. When his car went missing, he was so distraught that he sat on the sidewalk making car noises (vroom vroom!) to make himself feel better. Vega, Zangief, and Juri just happened to pass by and thought he was making fun of them, so they fight. Also, he picked a fight with Cody over illegal parking.
16 Zappa Wakes Up With Broken Bones
Zappa, from the Guilty Gear series, is either terribly naive or a bit on the dumb side. When we meet him, Zappa is just a poor guy looking for a doctor, because he believes he is afflicted with a weird disease. Every once in a while, he loses consciousness and wakes up in strange places days later, often covered with inexplicable bruises and injuries. In truth, he is possessed by a vengeful spirit. It’s that spirit which takes over his mind, using his body for fighting and getting vengeance on all those that wronged it.
15 TJ Combo Cheats To Beat Puny Humans But Plays Fair With Aliens And Robots
Once a popular boxer, Killer Instinct’s TJ Combo was world champion for five years in a row, until he was caught doing something illegal: turns out his arms were filled with cybernetic implants, which is cheating. Somehow, Combo thought he would never get caught, though any doctor taking a close look is bound to see something as obvious as “cybernetic implants”. Anyway, Combo now fights without the implants to prove he was a good champion, even though he’s now facing werewolves, skeletons, and robots. That’s like the one time everyone would forgive him for being a cyborg.
14 Shaquille O'Neal Took Time Off A Charity Game To Save A Kid From An Interdimensional Mummy
We all know the first Shaq Fu was a ridiculous game, but did you ever wonder why the Shaq was stuck fighting aliens and monsters in a karate tournament? As the story goes, Shaquille O’Neal was in Tokyo for a charity basketball game, but decided to stop in a dojo because why not? The master of the dojo explained to him that a young boy named Nezu was kidnapped by a mummy and brought to another dimension. Shaq then decided to go in there and fight the aliens and monsters because, once again, why not?
13 Midknight Wanted To End The War By Turning Everyone Into Vampires
Straight from Eternal Champions, Midknight’s history raises several questions in its peculiarity. Midknight was a scientist who was working with the CIA trying to create the ultimate biological weapon which would end the Vietnam War in 1967.
An accident in his lab exposed him to the virus he was creating and turned him into a bloodthirsty vampire.
So what kind of a weapon was he working on anyway? Was “turn the North Vietnamese people into vampires” really the CIA’s best idea? Because I feel like angry, immortal vampires are more of a problem than a solution.
12 Hakan Promotes His Cooking Oil Company Through Wrestling
Hakan made his debut in Street Fighter IV and came in as the first Turkish fighter in the series. His backstory is as unique as his origins: Hakan is the leader of a cooking oil company, who is also a wrestler in his down time.
Since oil wrestling is a national sport in Turkey, he is able to mix his business with his hobby.
He is also in search of new recipes for oil, so he does the only logical thing for a rich CEO to do: he enters a fighting tournament to tour the world and sample everyone’s culture.
11 When He Can't Control The North Pole, Santa's Evil Brother Moves To A Tropical Island
The Clayfighters series is full of really dumb characters and ideas, but Sumo Santa somehow takes the cake. This fighting Santa is actually the twin brother of the real Santa Claus, who moved to a tropical island with his own elves after he couldn’t take control of the North Pole. When the evil Dr. Kiln takes over his island, it impedes his toy production, and he is willing to wrestle everybody off his land if that’s what it takes to get back on track. So why is he a sumo wrestler? Nothing but an easy fat joke by Interplay.
10 A Mexican Wrestler Teaches Alex, A Dinosaur, The Secrets Of Lucha Libre
Remember Roger, Tekken’s highly intelligent kangaroo? Alex was born from the same genetic experiment, except that he is a dinosaur. Though he cannot speak it yet, he understands English perfectly. Also outfitted with boxing gloves, his path is like Roger’s save for one particular, extremely silly detail: He was trained in the art of fighting by a masked luchador. I wouldn’t call that a failed experiment at all. To me, a Mexican wrestler teaching a dinosaur with boxing gloves the finer points of a tope con hilo is pure magic.
9 Lord Raptor Takes 100 Lives In A Concert, But Still Hopes For A Comeback
Lord Raptor, from Darkstalkers, was a popular heavy metal musician who had it all and went a bit overboard with his last concert: he took his own life during a concert where most of the audience also got their soul sucked out of their body.
Somehow, being both deceased and the singer at a concert where everyone perishes did not sink his career.
Quite the opposite, in fact: he is making a come back with his new super zombie powers where his music now has hypnotic capabilities. Also, people don’t seem to realize he is, in fact, not alive.
8 Brad Wong Spent Four Years Of His Life Looking For A Single Drink
One day, Dead or Alive’s Brad Wong was sent on a quest by his sensei to find some legendary wine named “Genra”. Because Brad is not one to let his friends down, he spends the next four years, as well as two full martial arts tournaments, looking for that special wine. When he finally finds it, he decides to sample it before taking it back and goes on a trip because the wine is so good. The guy spent four years of his life fighting random people because he got lost on his way to the liquor store.
7 El Fuerte Beats Up People And Then Asks Them Cooking Tips
El Fuerte, Street Fighter’s resident luchador, is not just one of the best wrestlers in Mexico. He also happens to be an apprentice chef in his home country, though it is not clear which one of his professions is his main one. What we do know is that he is using the S.I.N. tournament as an opportunity to combine business with pleasure by fighting people and then asking them what they eat. He also has a theory where adding something delicious to another delicious thing (like adding chocolate to fish soup) means twice the deliciousness. I’d watch that on the Food Network.
6 Norimaro Longs For Someone's Touch
Created especially for Marvel Super Heroes vs Street Fighter, Norimaro is a Japan-exclusive character who happens to be both a fanboy and a deviant. Dressed as a high school student but looking like a middle-aged man, Norimaro will ask anyone for an autograph, even in the middle of a fight. He also seems to be aware that some of his adversaries are comic book characters. Often, he will get the traditional anime nosebleed when thinking about the female fighters doing splits and other fighting moves. I guess Norimaro is more creepy than funny, but he sure is ridiculous.