It’s hard to know how people will react to a character until they’re finished and sent out into the world. Those concept art sketches aren’t just for extras on the menu screen. They’re for refining who the player’s going to be controlling and interacting with until the developers are sure they’ll catch at least some interest.
For example, Tekken began life as a Virtua Fighter clone that was made by most of the old Virtua Fighter team. But their karate man became the ruthless Kazuya Mishima, and their Jacky Bryant lookalike turned into the goofy powerhouse Paul Phoenix. But not every character that gets drafted makes it into the game, as these proposed Tekken characters fell by the wayside.
8 Sake
There weren’t too many missing characters from the early games. Tekken 1 had a “Wild Card” that may have been a character or a random select option. They also thought of adding an average old man. Not a fighting beast like Heihachi or a kung fu master like Wang Jinrei. Just someone’s ordinary dad or grandad. Tekken 3 was different, as the old guard was replaced with more iconic newbies like Jin Kazama and Hwoarang.
But it was also going to have Sake, a salmon that does nothing but flop around and lay eggs. It was going to be a joke option before the devs realized people would feel ripped off by paying credit for a useless character. Sake technically made it into Tekken 7 as the salmon Kuma uses in his Rage Art. Otherwise, activating its T3 data brings up Yoshimitsu with Jin’s moves.
7 Giant Praying Mantis
Similar data exists for Jun Kazama, who produces Nina with Jin’s move set and Jun’s vocals from Tekken 2 when selected. There’s also a nameless character slot that comes up as Paul with what would become the move set for the Tekken Force soldiers in the console port. Bizarrely, this data was meant for a giant praying mantis.
The idea came about during development when a bug caused the character’s joints to shift backward and make them move like a mantis. The only thing that kept it from becoming a reality was a lack of development time. By this point the series had three fighting bears, a boxing kangaroo, and a dinosaur, so a giant insect wouldn’t have been too out of place.
6 Zombie Bride
Just because a character doesn’t make it into one game doesn’t mean they won’t make it into another. Bruce and Lei Wulong started off as designs for T1 before making it into T2. Then the devs had plans for a Capoeira girl for T2 before turning her into a man via T3’s Eddy Gordo, then back to a woman again for Tekken 4’s Christie Monteiro.
One idea that refused to stay dead was a zombie woman in a wedding dress. The concept was initially proposed during T3’s development, but producer Katsuhiro Harada and his team had trouble thinking of how she’d fight. Then it was proposed again for Tekken 6, where she would’ve been Miguel’s late sister Mia who was killed during the game’s intro. Then she pitched again for Tekken Revolution but still didn’t make the cut.
5 “Zoey” the Tekken Force Soldier
T3 introduced the idea of the Mishima Zaibatsu having its own army of grunts in the Tekken Force. They’re largely used as jobbers for cutscenes and the series’ different beat 'em-up modes. But outside T3 hacks, none of them were playable characters. However, the idea wasn’t out of the question.
Tekken 5 considered making a female Tekken Force member a fighter first. Though, unlike the lady grunts in T4’s Force Mode, her outfit would be much skimpier. According to Harada, she was going to be a Crow-ranked soldier from Texas called Zoey, and that she’d likely need more clothes to make it onto the roster. She ultimately didn’t make it into the game, and T6 went with Lars Alexandersson as the first playable Tekken Force trooper.
4 Shin Kamiya
For Tekken Revolution, the free-to-play tagless take on Tekken Tag Tournament 2, Bandai-Namco thought it’d be fun to put all their unused designs up for a poll. Whoever came first would finally become playable. Zoey, Sake, the Mantis, the boring old man, and a female Paul Phoenix were all on the voting ballot. As was Shin Kamiya, one of the leads from the Tekken: Blood Vengeance movie.
He was an old school friend of Jin’s who survived an experiment into making people immortal. Xiaoyu and Alisa were tasked with watching over him and to see if he really was immortal. Heihachi ultimately proved he wasn’t the hard way. He did well in the polls though, reaching the podium at 3rd place. But only the first-place winner would make it into the game, so Shin was left behind in the movie.
3 Ganmi-chan
To say Ganmi-chan was designed for TTT2 is to be charitable. She exists as an Idolmaster-esque doodle of a girl in a one-piece with her name in kanji on the chest. It’s more of a nickname too, as she would’ve been a sumo wrestling beauty (美 “mi”) who has a crush on Ganryu (å·Œ “gan” from 巌竜 “ganryu”, which means “rock dragon”).
Her design was rejected 5 seconds after being pitched to focus more on Ganryu’s popularity (or lack thereof). Harada tweeted her sketch and said if it got 1,000 retweets on Twitter, he’d pitch her again to the dev team. Which either didn’t work, didn’t convince the team, or Harada was being tongue-in-cheek. She was later put into Tekken Revolution's character poll, where she got 4th place.
2 “Shuwawei”
As rough as Tekken Revolution was, it had a better life than Tekken Mobile. Created by Bandai-Namco Vancouver, it was pretty much as the title says: a Tekken game for iOS and Android phones. It had its own story mode and unique characters, but it was shut down less than a year into its life in 2019. Turns out it was too buggy for most players, and expensive too via its overpriced transactions.
Yet director Landon Nguyen hoped it would have 100 characters in its roster. One of them would’ve been this mysterious girl who only got some renders when the plug was pulled. She doesn’t have an official name, though fans call her “Shuwawei”. All that’s really known about her is that she knows Taekwondo, and she may have been Korean.
1 Morrigan
So, who won that Tekken Revolution poll? Beating Zoey and Shin to the punch was a female vampire. Now named Eliza, she was proposed as early as T3 but never got in. Yet Harada noted that whenever she was proposed she brought good luck to the dev team in one way or another. For instance, she came back for T7, yet she now had 2D jumps and a super meter like Akuma and Geese Howard.
She didn’t have them in Revolution, so why are they in T7? It’s likely because Bandai-Namco originally wanted to bring Morrigan from Darkstalkers into the game too. Harada said she was a “prime candidate” for inclusion. However, they weren’t sure they could do her gameplay justice, so Eliza came in to save the day with her 2D fighter features instead. That said, with Tekken 8 on the horizon, maybe Morrigan will make a guest appearance. Or Ganmi-chan, or Zoey, or that giant praying mantis instead.