Considering the sheer number of video games that focus on hand-to-hand combat, it is no surprise that many video games look to real-life martial arts for inspiration. But after almost four decades of fighting games, countless third-person action games, and more boxing games than you could fit in a ring, game developers have had to get inventive with their in-universe fighting styles.

Related: Best Real-World Martial Arts Used In Video Games

Some of these made-up forms of combat are based in reality and just expanded upon to be more fantastical or visually striking. Others are totally made up with no foundation in reality. And a few of them are just guys that bring guns to fistfights and claim that they aren't cheating.

10 Teräs Käsi - Star Wars: Masters Of Teräs Käsi

Star Wars Masters Of Tera Kasi and Emila Clarke as Qi'ra in Solo

Before Disney took over, it would be fair to call the Star Wars expanded universe a bit of a mess. Countless books, comics, games, and more were written by different authors creating conflicting timelines and cannons. After the House of Mouse bought the franchise though everything outside the six main movies and the Clone Wars was culled from the cannon.

Slowly over the years, a few select things from the Star Wars Legends catalogue has been folded back into the series. The High Republic, Gran Admiral Thrawn, and Teräs Käsi. That's right the fake Kung Fu from the notoriously bad PlayStation game is now part of Star Wars forever, thanks to the standalone Solo movie. It's not especially memorable but apparently, it's feared throughout the galaxy, and, hey, it's fun to say at least!

9 Charge Characters - Most Fighting Games

Street Fighter 6 - Guile and Chun Li

Okay, yes, bracing for a hit or taking a moment to centre yourself before striking is certainly a thing you have to do in pretty much any martial art, but we can all see that charge characters are taking it a bit too far. We're not doubting that Chun Li or Guile could beat the living snot out of us, we just don't know if someone holding back or couching for a few seconds first actually has that much impact on us being kicked to the curb.

Related: Strongest Street Fighter Characters, Ranked

This is without mentioning characters that don't even seem to have a fighting style beyond vibing out for prolonged periods before lining up a big punch. Countless people have tried to break down what fighting styles Goku draws from but from our point of view, he just seems like a guy that yells for a long time before punching. Maybe, we are the fools and approaching combat from an ignorant perspective but some of these characters seem to just be biding their time.

8 Suus Mahna - Star Trek Games

Star Trek 25th Anniversary and Spock Vulcan Nerve Pinching Kirk

The Star Trek universe has been around since the mid-1960s, and over that time, it has developed one of the deepest and most well-documented lores in all of fandom. However, a lot of that documentation comes from later writers and fans trying to make sense of some of the earlier series lax approaches to storytelling.

Suus Mahna is one of those retcons, introduced mainly to explain the famous Vulcan nerve pinch. This single-handled move was a great way for the writers to help Spock quickly deal with enemies without all that time-consuming and expensive fight choreography being needed. Suus Mahna may just exist to help pave over some of the original series' limitations, but we can't deny that it would be cool to learn a fighting style so powerful it could incapacitate someone with two fingers.

7 Dancer And Slugger - Yakuza 0

Yakuza 0 - Break dancing fighting style, Majima saying holy shit and battler fighting style

If you know anything about Yakuza, it's that it has really silly side stories. But if you know a second thing, it's that it has ridiculous beat-em-up-inspired combat. Ever since the first game on the PlayStation Kiryu has been knocking thugs about and using anything he can get his hands on to hurt Yakuza members.

His fighting style throughout the years has been pretty standard shades of street brawling, but Yakuza 0's addition of Majima to the playable roster allowed Ryu Ga Gotoku to cut loose and go wild with his wild card fighting stances. One of the stances sees the Mad Dog go at it with a baseball bat, while the other sees him use the power of breakdancing to beat fools up. They might be ridiculously over the top, but they're also ridiculously fun.

6 Juggling - Devil May Cry

Devil May Cry 5 Nero in the air and Bayonetta in the air

I'm not sure what else you would call Dante's style of fighting in Devil May Cry other than juggling. People like him, Bayonetta, and Raiden in Metal Gear Rising, all seem to have learned from the same teacher when it came to their fighting styles. That teacher must have been a talented clown because they have proven themselves at being expert jugglers and capable of keeping baddies in the air for minutes at a time.

What makes this fighting style so cool isn't just that everyone who knows it seems to own a leather coat or a motorbike, but that they can defy almost every law of nature and stay off the ground by sheer force of will. Juggling might not be a named fake fighting style, but enough characters seem to be experts at it that we had to mention it here.

5 Guns - Mortal Kombat

Mortal Kombat - Erron Black and Rambo

The Mortal Kombat competition doesn't really seem to have many rules, and if we're honest, we think Shang Tsung just makes most of it up as he goes along. The clearest evidence of this is that this martial arts tournament designed to see who is the universe's greatest fighter allows people like Stryker, Erron Black, and Rambo to partake in it even though they almost exclusively use firearms.

Related: Best Mortal Kombat Stage Fatalities Of All Time

It isn't even like they are trying to hide this blatant cheating by claiming they are performing some form of Gun Fu inspired by The Matrix. At some point, they must have just convinced the heads of the tournament that guns are a perfectly fair hand-to-hand fighting style. Which we guess lines up with Shang Tsung's general disregard for being a good sport.

4 Whatever It Is That Dan Is Doing - Street Fighter

Dan Hibiki in Street Fighter V

There are plenty of joke characters in fighting games, but none are as smug and annoying as Dan in Street Fighter. His fighting style does actually have an in-universe name, that of Saikyō-ryū. It's said to be a parody of Kyokugenryu Karate, which itself is a fake fighting style in the Mark of The Wolves and King of Fighters universe.

That's right, Dan uses a made-up fighting style, based on a made-up fighting style. It couldn't suit his character more, and it couldn't be more annoying if he tried, but I am sure he will continue to try anyway.

3 Ansatsuken - Street Fighter

Street Fighter - Akuma and Ryu

Ansatsuken is a fictional fighting style that first appeared in the Fist of the North Star manga in the 1980s. Since then though it has been adopted by a lot of imposing fictional fighters.

Related: Every Street Fighter 2 Game, Ranked

Akuma's version of Ansatsuken is the most similar to Kenshiro's. However, since Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo it has been cited that any characters that use Hadoken, Shoryuken, or Tatsumaki all learned it as part of know some form of Ansatsuken training.

2 Shoto - Countless Fighting Games

Street Fighter 6 Luke Ryu Faces - via Capcom

When Street Fighter originally came out, Capcom claimed that Ryu's fighting style was the discipline of Shotokan. However, his moves actually have very little in common with the martial art style. As a result, Ryu and characters with similar styles in other fighting games have been nicknamed Shoto-clones.

It's somewhat wild that the fighting style that is used for most beginner characters in fighting games is totally made up, and its name came from an erroneous manual, but here we are. Shoto is now one of the most common, fake fighting styles across the industry.

1 Wild Dancer - Like A Dragon: Ishin

Like a Dragon Ishin - Ryoma fending off foes with the Wild Dancer style

We said that Ryu Ga Gotoku loved over-the-top fighting styles, and no fighting style is more over-the-top than that of the Wild Dancer in Like A Dragon: Ishin. We can't say for sure that no one in 1860s Japan ever tried to dual-wield a sword and a gun, but we doubt they had the spinning skills of Sakamoto Ryoma.

What's more, we definitely doubt that they had the infinite ammo that Ishin's protagonist has while he twirls and whirls through swaths of enemies. However, we can't help but feel that its impossibility only makes Ryoma look like more of a badass.

Next: Relatable Things Everyone Does Playing Like A Dragon: Ishin