Video Game Inspirations and Oddities is an article series I would like to do that focuses on the creation and design phase of video games and their characters.
The following article can also be viewed in video form (which is narrated and has even more images and examples) here:
Video Version
In the June 1996 issue of the short-lived Game On! magazine, there was an article comparing three polygonal fighting game characters who had somewhat suspicious similarities. These characters were Sarah Bryant (from 1993's Virtua Fighter), Nina Williams (from 1994's Tekken) and Sofia (from 1995's Battle Arena Toshinden). All three of these characters are blonde-haired women with backstories involving brainwashing, amnesia, and secret organizations.
The Game On! article also briefly mentions a fourth character - perhaps the most famous of the group fitting these particular qualifications - though the writing did not focus on her because she was pixel rather than polygonal. Well, she was not yet polygonal in 1996 when the article was written.
The Game On! article questions why these characters - appearing on the fighting game scene so quickly one after another - are so similar, but does not reveal a satisfactory answer. So, I will try to go a bit more in depth with this question.
It is well known that Capcom, SNK, and other fighting game developers take a lot of inspiration from various entertainment sources when it comes to creating their character rosters - sources like manga, anime, movies, etc.
But is there any specific inspiration for one of the more prevalent character archetypes in fighting games: The Blonde Brainwashed Assassin Woman?
Have you ever wondered why this character type is so ubiquitous in fighting games?
Before I go any further, let me quickly differentiate this character type from just any "Blonde Woman Fighting Game Character", because there are plenty of those also (especially those in the police and/or military professions - which do have some overlap with the type I'm going to write about).
In the case of the Blonde Brainwashed Assassin (Type 2), the "assassin" and "brainwashed" (or "amensiac") aspects are emphasized.
And of course, the "femme fatale" archetype has existed for a long time - but in regards to the Blonde Brainwashed Assassin Woman, I am specifically describing a fighting game character with these traits: blonde hair, an assassination occupation (usually working for some group or organization, though sometimes as a spy instead), and suffering from either amnesia, brainwashing (either forcibly or via being taught from a young age), or both.
I am guessing you are already thinking of one of the most famous and earliest examples of the Brainwashed Blonde Assassin in fighting games - the one that was briefly mentioned in that Game On! magazine article: Cammy White from Capcom's Street Fighter franchise.
According to the official Capcom book Street Fighter Eternal Challenge, Cammy's backstory is as follows:
Cammy was once known as "Killer Bee" and was a member of Shadaloo's elite unit of "Doll" assassins. After receiving orders to infiltrate a military base in England, she lost her memories and was left without purpose.
Or to be more detailed, as the book later states:
Many missions and battles later, the intense Shadaloo brainwashing techniques faded and she awakened as a new person with no memory of her past.
The bio continues:
After being brought in by an English military unit, she joined the Delta Red crew of super soldiers in their mission to bring Bison, and the other members of Shadaloo, to justice.
Nationality: Unknown
Likes: Collecting Fighting Data
Dislikes: Sympathetic Eyes
Her original bio from 1993 states:
She is only 19 years of age and an undercover agent of the English Secret Service. One day, her team received an order to destroy the kingpin of Shadowlaw. As she approaches Bison, surprising facts begin to be revealed.
(In the Japanese version of Super Street Fighter II, Cammy's ending revealed that she was Bison's Agent.)
Likes: Cats
Dislikes: Everything in her sight when in a bad mood.
Also, though her nationality is listed as unknown, her home base of operations is the UK.
Cammy first graced arcade cabinets in September of 1993, a few months before Sarah Bryant's own debut. But to better understand Cammy's creation, we must go back further in time - to the 1980s - and start with a manga and anime series called:
Kizuoibito, or Wounded Man.
(Note: Wounded Man depicts graphic content, but I will not be showing any such graphic content in this article)
Wounded Man was a manga serialized from 1982 to 1986 (with an anime version released from 1986 to 1988) created by:
Kazuo Koike (a manga writer famous for Lone Wolf and Cub, Lady Snowblood, Crying Freeman, Samurai Executioner, Path of the Assassin, Mad Bull 34, and more)...
...and...
...Ryoichi Ikegami (a manga artist known for Sanctuary, Crying Freeman, Mai the Psychic Girl, among others).
There is a specific character in Wounded Man - a character called "Misty".
Misty was trained from a young age to become an assassin. She has braided pigtails and is usually depicted with blonde hair (including in the anime version). At one point she wears a military style camouflage uniform.
Akira "Akiman" Yasuda, a Capcom artist who helped design Cammy, outright stated that Cammy was inspired by Misty from Wounded Man - so there is no debate or speculation about that.
When Misty is first introduced, she is depicted as sometimes being an emotionless assassin - but she is also often shown to be very volatile and emotionally unstable. She seems to have serious psychological problems stemming from her tragic past. The manga version of Wounded Man vaguely hints at Misty's tragic backstory, but the anime shows a bit more of how she was trained in assassination. As the series progresses, her character softens a bit.
This is reminiscent of how the character of Cammy evolved over time also - as when she first appeared she seemed to be a more volatile and unstable character. In Cammy's official biography from Super Street Fighter II, she is said to like cats, but to dislike everything when she is in a bad mood. In materials for the 1994 animated Street Fighter II movie, Cammy is said to be often emotionless but also sometimes temperamental and cruel.
These days, Cammy's character is usually shown as being a lot more cool and collected - but her earlier rendition was often depicted much more similarly to Wounded Man's Misty character.
There is also an early artwork of Cammy for Super Street Fighter II Turbo from 1994, depicting her with glasses like Misty. I think it was an unused version of her special ending image.
There is evidence (according to The Cutting Room Floor website) that Cammy's name was originally going to be "Sarah". Though this is a common name, its selection could have been inspired by the blonde-haired character Sarah Connor from The Terminator movie series - particularly due to Terminator 2's popularity at the time. Terminator 2 was released in theaters in 1991 and was also a big hit on home video in the proceeding years - and was popular in Japan.
I will go back to this point later, but Sarah Bryant from Virtua Fighter (another Blonde Brainwashed Assassin) - also created in 1993, like Cammy - has been confirmed to be based on Sarah Connor in an interview (from the website 4gamer) with Seiichi Ishii that states:
Sarah was an expansion of Sarah Connor from the movie Terminator.
The article further states:
This sense of homage was also carried over to Tekken, which Ishii developed after moving to Namco.
Anyway, for Capcom's own Blonde Brainwashed Assassin: though they were possibly originally going to go with "Sarah" for her name, they changed it to "Cammy" at some point during development. It is unknown why the change occurred, but some speculate it is because Capcom found out about Virtua Fighter being in development and also having a Blonde female character named Sarah.
Other people believe that "Sarah" was not Cammy's early name, but was instead going to be used as a variant in certain regions. Either way, Capcom decided not to use it at all for the character.
(However, a character named Sarah White did later appear in the Capcom game Powered Gear/Armored Warriors in 1994.)
The reason Capcom chose the name Cammy could have been because camouflage military uniforms are sometimes referred to as "cammies" - which could fit with her design's military aspects and her camouflaged legs. However, the in-universe explanation for her name varies, and I will mention one version of such later.
Though this may be a coincidence, in one of the arcs of Wounded Man that Misty is a prominent character in, there is an American soldier character: a Vietnam Veteran named General White. Cammy's full name is, of course, Cammy White.
General White also has a facial scar like Cammy.
An alternative idea is that the name "Cammy White" could have come from the name "Kitty White" - the famous cat character from Hello Kitty who resides in the UK. Besides both sharing the same location, Cammy is also a big fan of cats.
I'd also like to mention another possible inspiration for Cammy - though as far as I know, unlike Misty from Wounded Man, this one has never been officially confirmed. However, I do agree with many people who believe that it is likely that Cammy was influenced in various aspects by this character.
That character being:
Gally from Yukito Kishiro's Gunnm.
Or better known to some as Alita from Battle Angel Alita - a popular manga that began in 1990.
Now the Cammy/Gally connection has been discussed online many times before over the years, so I'm not going to go into great detail about it - but if you are interested in reading about some of the similarities between Gally and Cammy, you should check CammyFan. CammyFan is a Cammy fansite that has been online since the year 2000 (though the creator actually had earlier incarnations of the website as far back as 1996).
However, basically both characters suffer from amnesia - and despite their memory loss, they both still retain knowledge about how to fight and are excellent combatants. Gally and Cammy even have somewhat similar fighting styles and moves.
Also, even years later after her creation, the Gally/Alita influence on Cammy seemed to continue. In Masahiko Nakahira's Sakura Ganbaru manga from 1996 and 1997, there is a scene where the character Sakura names Cammy after a stray cat. This is similar to the Gunnm/Battle Angel manga where Gally/Alita is named after a cat.
As for other manga related inspirations, it has been confirmed that Cammy was also influenced by another popular mangaka at the time: Masamune Shirow, best known for Ghost in the Shell.
In particular, Cammy's arm protectors come from Shirow's Appleseed manga.
And unconfirmed, but also related to Shirow, is that his manga series Dominion features some outfits that are very similar to the Delta Red Uniform (with the upside down triangle).
Shirow also seems to be particularly fond of camouflage.
Since her introduction, Cammy has long been a very popular Street Fighter character, and has likely inspired many similar characters. However, it is also possible that some of these characters were not solely inspired by Cammy, but instead developed based on other similar motifs that were in the public consciousness at the time. One such example of this type of character is Sarah Bryant from Virtua Fighter, one of the subjects in the 1996 Game On! article.
As I mentioned earlier, it is confirmed that Sarah Bryant is based on Sarah Connor from Terminator 1 and 2. However, in the Terminator movies, Sarah Connor, though blonde, is not exactly a brainwashed assassin - unless you consider a "resistance leader trying to destroy computer factories to prevent a terrible future" to fit that descriptor.
So, where did the brainwashed assassin portion of the Sarah Bryant character come from? How did both fighting game characters - both blondes initially going to be called Sarah created in 1993 - end up with such similar "brainwashed assassin" backstories?
Well, first of all, I have not been able to find any mention of this aspect of Sarah's story from 1993's Virtua Fighter 1 - either in manuals or guide-books (in either Japanese or English). So it's possible that her brainwashed assassin backstory might have been retroactively added afterwards during the development of 1994's Virtua Fighter 2. Perhaps after the popularity of Street Fighter's Cammy, Sega decided to make their own blonde woman fighter even more similar to her. However, there was something else going on at the time that may have also inspired Sarah - and possibly even Cammy (to an extent) and the many other Blonde Brainwashed Assassins on the horizon.
And that something was La Femme Nikita, a very popular French movie from 1990 about a female assassin - who, though not brainwashed, was forced into becoming an assassin by a government organization. The assassin was not blonde in this movie, but there was an American remake in 1993 called Point of No Return that was also quite popular at the time of its release - and the female lead in Point of No Return did have blonde hair.
Point of No Return was released in theaters in early 1993, and could have inspired Sarah Bryant's own forced-to-be-an-assassin backstory (which I believe was possibly retroactively added to Sarah's backstory in 1994). So in addition to being possibly inspired by Cammy, Sarah's story could have also been inspired by the 1990 Nikita movie or its 1993 remake.
Now, as for the "brainwashed" and "amnesiac" aspects of characters like Sarah or Cammy, that does not come from Nikita. In Nikita, the lead is forced to become an assassin after being arrested for killing someone - and thus not brainwashed. But like with the Sarah Bryant character, the lead in Nikita only becomes an assassin later in life (in comparison to some of the more common brainwashed "raised at a young age" characters of the Blonde Assassin archetype).
In Wounded Man, the Misty character could indeed be considered brainwashed (as she was raised from a very young age to become an assassin). And in Gunnm/Battle Angel, Gally has amnesia. So both of those could be possible inspirations for this aspect. My own speculation as to why so many of these Blonde Assassin characters in fighting games are brainwashed or amnesiac is simply because it makes these characters more sympathetic to potential players (who might want to play as these assassins, but perhaps do not want to feel as bad about doing so).
The designer for Virtua Fighter, Seiichi Ishii, would also work as a designer on the fighting game Tekken, which was released in 1994. Virtua Fighter's Sarah Bryant has similarities to the Tekken character Nina Williams - a blonde woman fighter who was trained to be an assassin since she was young (and who would later even get an amnesia storyline in 1997's Tekken 3). Many people do believe that Nina is inspired by La Femme Nikita and Point of No Return. In Tekken, Nina's name is even the same as the codename of the assassin in Point of No Return: Nina.
Speaking of inspiration and influences, La Femme Nikita might have its own inspiration - one from as far back as the 1970s. It's been suggested that Nikita was possibly influenced by the Japanese movie Zero Woman from 1974, which features the same concept of a woman forced to become an assassin by an organization. The Zero Woman movie itself was based on a manga by Tōru Shinohara - probably most well known for being the creator of the manga that inspired the Female Prisoner Scorpion movies.
Perhaps coincidentally, in many of Tōru Shinohara's manga covers, his female protagonists are depicted with blonde hair - including on the covers of the Zero Woman manga.
Cammy's red coat seems a bit similar to Zero Woman's red coat. Also, both wear green underneath. Though Cammy's coat is also similar to the one from the movie Don't Look Now from 1973. Or maybe it is inspired by Little Red Riding Hood - or perhaps there is no real inspiration behind it, and red was chosen simply because it stands out.
If Wikipedia is to be believed, Zero Woman apparently had a resurgence in popularity in the 1990s, based on the success of La Femme Nikita. This shows that Nikita (and likely Point of No Return as well) was popular in Japan at the time and helped cause a revitalization of interest in Zero Woman - itself the possible progenitor of the concept of a woman protagonist forced into working for a shady organization as an assassin. More Zero Woman movies were made in the 1990s to capitalize on the Nikita success. So, Nikita, Point of No Return, Zero Woman - all of these were likely in the public consciousness of Japan at the time when Cammy, Sarah and Nina (all characters created in Japan) arrived on the video game scene.
However, disregarding the blonde woman aspect for a moment - what is the origin of the general concept of the brainwashed or amnesiac government assassin? Well, characters with memory problems seem to be a fairly common theme in spy, thriller, and detective fiction - so I'm not sure where it first originated exactly. The idea of brainwashed sleeper agents goes back at least as far as Richard Condon's novel The Manchurian Candidate from 1959 - which had a popular movie adaptation in 1962.
And in 1980, another book, Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Identity - which received television and movie adaptations in 1988 and 2002 - was also influential in shaping this concept.
In The Bourne Identity, the protagonist has memory loss regarding his past as an assassin - similar to characters like Cammy. A lot of entertainment media in the 1980s and 1990s explored similar themes involving memory loss and implanted memories - including comic books. One prominent example being Marvel's Wolverine - who was first created in 1974 but whose memory problems were not really featured until the 1980s and 1990s. Parts of Wolverine's own story and character might even be influenced by Archie Goodwin and Walter Simonson's 1973 Manhunter comic (which involved a secret organization).
Later there would be movies like 1996's The Long Kiss Goodnight - which involves a woman version of Jason Bourne, who is visually similar to the fighting game blonde brainwashed assassins of that time period.
In addition to Yukito Kishiro's Gunnm/Battle Angel manga, the manga artist Masamune Shirow's influence on the era should also not be discounted, as his works were quite popular at the time. Already I mentioned a couple Shirow references related to Cammy - at least one that has been officially confirmed - but even just in general, Shirow manga and anime featured more than a few female characters working for government agencies in espionage or military capacities, including assassination.
As stated earlier, Nina from Tekken had some similarities to Sarah Bryant because the same designer worked on both characters. Also, I think Nina and her sister, Anna, look a bit similar to these older, unused Sarah Virtua Fighter concept arts:
In the 1995 Street Fighter II V anime, Cammy is redesigned to look less military-inspired and more assassin-like, in the style of Sarah Bryant and Nina Williams. Perhaps this version of Cammy took some influence from them.
Anyway, there could still be another piece of the puzzle that I am missing...
...but so far this is the best possible explanation I have for the phenomenon of Blonde Brainwashed Assassin Women that suddenly appeared in the 1990s and established a fighting game archetype. An archetype that continued to persist in the years that followed, especially in the '90s.
Here are a few more examples of fighting game characters who fit the archetype in some aspects (they all have at least some of the required traits, though some fit better than others).
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