10 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Street Fighter

9. Several Characters Are Based On Real-Life People

In order to make Street Fighter feel global in scale, the designers based several characters on real-life martial artists and figures from around the world in order to make the roster feel authentic, as if they were actually entrants in a fighting tournament. Eagle has an uncanny resemblance to Petrov, the character from the Bruce Lee film Fist of Fury. His later designs also bare a likeliness to Freddy Mercury. Joe, Deejay, Fei Long appear be based on the martial artists Joe Lewis, Billy Blanks and Bruce Lee, respectively. Alex and Hugo are based not on martial artists, but on the professional wrestlers Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant. Alex features a similar kind of move-set to the one Hogan used in the ring, while he also rips his shirt off during his intro, another trademark of the hulkster. Hugo bares a much more immediate visual resemblance to Andre the Giant as he's a whopping 8 feet tall, in his profile it's revealed they also share the same birthday. The unique intro animation the two fighters share in Street Fighter 3 is an homage to Hulk and Andre's iconic stare down just before they wrestled for the WWF title at Wrestlemania III.