Character design can be one of the more fun aspects of game development. All those artists sketching away, gradually pulling a basic figure into the final character picture by picture. Plus, the amount of concept art gives the player something to unlock as they progress through the game.
Sometimes, however, a character’s inspirations can seem a little obvious. Street Fighter 6’s Manon looks like a ballet judoka in combat, but resembles Lady Gaga outside of it, complete with backing dancers. If the star did inspire the character, she wouldn’t be the first celebrity behind a character’s looks.
7 Bill Rizer & Lance Bean from Contra
The gun-toting protagonists from Contra (or Gryzor in the arcades) don’t really look like anyone in-game. Though with them being two shirtless beefcakes fighting against aliens, there had to be a touch of Rambo, Predator, and Aliens in there. For example, their names come from Aliens actors Bill Paxton, Paul Reiser, Lance Henriksen, and Michael Biehn.
The art on the game cover is another story. Blue-bandana Bill is clearly based on Arnold Schwarzenegger in Predator. Red-bandana Lance, who does resemble John Rambo, was drawn from another screenshot of Arnold in the same movie. That’s because artist Bob Wakelin, who thought the game was a "Predator/Aliens rip-off", drew it as such, complete with a little Xenomorph face in the middle.
6 Fei Long from Street Fighter
Martial arts superstars have inspired a brace of fighting game characters. Mortal Kombat's Johnny Cage’s original look took inspiration from Jean-Claude Van Damme in Bloodsport, while Art of Fighting and King of Fighters’ Muay Thai fighter King resembles Dutch kickboxer Saskia Van Rijswijk in China White. Then there's Bruce Lee. The world's most famous kung fu action hero has inspired so many fighting game characters that they could fill out a roster on their own.
The book Undisputed Street Fighter: The Art & Innovation Behind the Game-Changing Series describes how the team behind Super Street Fighter 2 produced Fei Long, one of the first Lee-alikes in the genre. It was rumored that his resemblance to the legend was why Fei Long hadn’t appeared in a game since Ultra Street Fighter 4. However, both Lee's family and SF6's director Takayuki Nakayama have denied this. Otherwise, Van Damme, Van Rijswijk, and others would have similar cases after Netherrealm Studios and SNK.
5 Lei Wulong from Tekken
Tekken liked Bruce Lee enough to replicate him twice in their games with Marshall and Forest Law. However, they also thought they could use Hong Kong’s other top kung fu movie star: Jackie Chan. Concept art for the first Tekken showed an old-school Chan lookalike, but it wasn’t until Tekken 2 that this figure would become the super cop Lei Wulong.
Or rather, ‘Super Police’, as he is nicknamed in the games. It's a little more legally distinct from the Jackie Chan movie Super Cop. His playful approach to stances resembles Chan’s more light-hearted approach to action in his movies. More blatantly, one of his classic win poses is a move-for-move re-enactment of Jackie Chan’s intoxicated sways from the third act of Drunken Master.
4 Jennifer Simpson from Clock Tower
Resident Evil made survival horror popular when it was released in 1996, but it wasn’t the first. One of its predecessors came out just a year earlier on the SNES. Originally made by Human Entertainment, Clock Tower saw Jennifer Simpson and her friends being adopted by the Barrows Family, only to end up stalked through their manor by the murderous Scissorman. Jennifer has to find a way out safely or become part of the body count.
In Issue #121 of Retro Gamer, and in The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers Vol 2, the developers talked about their influences. One of them was the 1985 Giallo horror movie Phenomena, where a young girl fights off a serial killer in a boarding school. The leader character Jennifer Corvino, played by Jennifer Connelly, inspired Jennifer Simpson’s design. If the long dark hair, white outfit, and face didn’t give it away, the name Jennifer likely would.
3 Zack from Dead Or Alive
Some characters don’t start off as celebrity pastiches. They just evolve that way. In the first Dead or Alive game, Zack was a flashy, cocky Muay Thai fighter that didn’t seem to be modeled after anyone specifically. By the second installment, he got a redesign that made him look more outrageous, like his notorious alien Teletubby outfit. His more subdued green hair and crop top combo drew comparisons with basketball star Dennis Rodman.
Some sources even said it was based on his look in the movie Double Team, in which he fought Mickey Rourke with Jean-Claude Van Damme. Rodman himself appreciated the resemblance though, saying “He is one wild character, just like me, and a bit of a prankster, which I can relate to.” He would then go on to voice the character in the first DOA Xtreme Beach Volleyball game.
2 Kenshi from Mortal Kombat
Not every celebrity is so keen on the connection. Keanu Reeves wasn’t so keen on two of his top roles, John Wick and The Matrix’s Neo, turning up in a Mortal Kombat game. In an interview with Esquire magazine, he said “Neo, John Wick. They’re doing their own thing. Mortal Kombat is doing their own thing”. That does leave the door open for Ted ‘Theodore’ Logan though.
Unless things change, MK fans will have to make do with Kenshi. Fans couldn’t help comparing the blind warrior’s blindfolded look and telekinetic powers with Neo’s look in The Matrix Revolutions after he’s blinded. Yet the character predated Neo’s blind look by roughly 2 years, debuting in 2002’s MK: Deadly Alliance. Never one to shy away from an Easter egg, MK’s developers hinted at the resemblance in an intro between Kenshi and Cassie Cage in Mortal Kombat X.
1 Andrew Ryan from Bioshock
The problem with calling awareness to something is that it can also popularize it. The original Bioshock criticized Objectivism, a philosophy championed by Ayn Rand. She described it in her work Atlas Shrugged as “the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.”
The game’s villain Andrew Ryan takes this to its extreme when his undersea city Rapture becomes a hellscape because rich people thought their selfishness would produce altruism. Ryan’s look was based on the early 20th century’s most infamous billionaire Howard Hughes. When it comes to the well-off thinking that their own interests matter above everyone else’s though, there’s no shortage of sources to draw inspiration from.