One of the best things about Street Fighter 6 is its incredibly detailed story. World Tour has been an exceptional way to tell it, and after completing the main story, it’s clear that it’s far from finished. In fact, I’m expecting a second main story as new characters and changes are brought in, and I’m keeping a particular eye out for Gill, as his influence in the game has been pushed since the first World Tour trailer, and there is much symbolism in the game that points to him being the main antagonist rather than JP, whether it’s the red and blue flags at Suval’hal Arena or Rashid’s World Tour story after maxing his bond.
However, something about the dialogue seems off-putting at times. It’s not that it’s bad writing. On the contrary, this is the best written dialogue we’ve ever gotten in a Street Fighter game. It’s incredible, and I love going through it to see what the characters say next! However, the dialogue you get generally runs into three categories:
1) Statements that are eloquent, but boring and mundane, mostly talking about fighting and training.
2) WTF statements that beat into your head how creepy some of these characters are, even if they’re trying not to be.
3) WTF statements that leave you completely hanging.
The first is the most common, as a majority of the characters offer the same type of unsolicited fighting advice on getting stronger. The third is not as often as the first two, but the most prominent case is what’s said by the members of the Andore family in The Fighty Mighty mission, who want you to beat the most powerful of the Andore family, simply named Andore, out of his crippling depression.
Yes, that actually happens. Andore has beaten so many strong opponents that he literally ran out of people to beat up and is depressed that he can’t get stronger. The one thing he wants you to do? Beat him up.
Eventually, you beat him, which cheers him up, but even then, beating him leaves a certain feeling of incompleteness, as if you’re not done with him or his family yet, and it leaves the possibility of facing him again in the future. More so, beating the second person you have to face to finish The Fighty Mighty, Fou-Lu, has a more satisfying conclusion.
Essentially, you have to fight Final Fight, Street Fighter, Captain Commando, and Breath of Fire characters during the mission, and while it could be stated that the mission was simply there as a nice easter egg for long time Capcom fans, the fact that this mission is as long as it is means it’s canon.
That’s right. Breath of Fire, along with Strider and Final Fight, is now canon to the Street Fighter universe.
This sets up some interesting possibilities, including the idea that the Ryu in Street Fighter is an incarnation of the many Ryus in the Breath of Fire series, with the characters we fight in The Fighty Mighty being incarnations of their respective characters in BoF. In fact, Bosch and Yua, who share the names of BoF characters themselves, could be incarnations of characters they’re named after. Still another interpretation is that the characters in The Fighty Mighty ARE the actual characters from BoF, brought to the current timeline by an unknown force.
However, the most likely scenario, supported by events in-game, is that all of these characters who have appeared are look-alikes. The Breath of Fire series is canon to Street Fighter, but the characters we see likely aren’t the original characters. Sure, they could all just be the equivalent of cosplayers, who run rampant throughout the game, but there’s a far more riveting explanation.
Enter the Copy Fighters, who we first encounter at the SiRN Building. https://youtu.be/MzK9RjQZVxM
We end up fighting multiple Copy Fighters at various points in the game. Each of them have a unique fighting style directly copied from one of the masters, and beating them increases the EXP of the master they’re copying. It would be as if you’re fighting the masters themselves, although other enemies in the game copy the masters’ styles just as well.
What sets the Copy Fighters part, however, is their enigmatic, artificial appearance. While other enemies could simply say they were students of the originals, it’s clear the Copy Fighters were created to be clones. What makes them even more interesting is the idea that they seem to make an attempt to be fully human. Although you first encounter them in the mysterious SiRN building, you see them at various points in the game, including fighting tournaments and the Metro City Subway.
Quite simply, they ride the train just like everyone else.
“Well, so do the drones, Hyoombas, and refrigerators,” you say. Well, yes, but as weird as it is to see sentient appliances travel by train, it at least makes sense that they take it because it helps them move from place to place without draining battery power. The Copy Fighters, on the other hand, seem to take it strictly for leisure. Also, while there is one specific refrigerator, a single Vagrant Fridge, that seems to have a mind of its own and joins the Suval’Hal Arena Throwdown to face your avatar in battle, for the most part, it’s clear that bots like that are controlled by someone else, if the many incarnations of Phillia O’Borg are any indication.
Copy Fighters seem to have their own will, whether it’s fighting in tournaments, riding the train, or following someone who modeled himself after Dan Hibiki.
If this is true, then what we’re looking at is Street Fighter’s remake of the game Snatcher, where the eponymous enemy is replacing human beings around the world. The Fighty Mighty seems to reflect this with the Breath of Fire characters, and one character in particular caught my eye with her design: Njomo.
In Breath of Fire IV, Njomo is a fairy who becomes a Master you can learn from, much like the characters you meet up with and study under in SF6. In fact, it could be said that the RPG-style system used in World Tour-mode was influenced by BoF. By that logic, the Njomo in SF6 is a direct, canon homage to the original, but something about her is telling: the green markings on her arms. While they certainly reflect her original supernatural nature, the fact is they’re similar to both the markings on the Copy Fighters as well as the copy fighter Seth.
If Njomo and the others are Copy Fighters, then it stands to reason that more disguised ones exist, and are being hinted at in certain ways. In the dialogue list above, there’s a category I haven’t talked about yet: the second one, about creepy characters saying creepy things. While none of the BoF Copy Fighters say anything that could raise a red flag, it seems that their transformations are complete, literally becoming the characters they’ve copied. However, it seems that some of these cyborgs haven’t quite gotten the transformation thing down yet, if Clawdio, an aesthetic copy of Vega, is any indication.
“There’s no proof that the Shadaloo expys are Copy Fighters.” Sure, but then there’d be no real reason why’d they be locked away in the Suval’Hal Arena rooms. Buff Balo, Clawdio, and Lane Saget aren’t even that strong when you do face them, and none of them have the styles of the fighter they’re copying. In other words, they’re incomplete clones.
E.G. Connor, the creepy, porcelain doll-looking runner of the Suval’Hal underground tournament, might be behind their creations, or otherwise exercises some control over the expys he locked away. Of course, in his words:
Out of all of the creepy characters we see in Street Fighter 6, this leprechaun easily takes the cake. From his painted-on face to his Q-like eyes to the schoolboy clothes he borrowed from Oliver Twist, he is every bit the uncanny nightmare that awaits Cammy in her sleep, being the Doll she never could be, and this is said without the two having any connection at all at this point in the game.
All of this being said, the question is why E.G. Connor would have such a vested interest in testing your abilities. Yes, he claims to be running an underground tournament, but the people you face in said tournament never face off against each other like they would in Metro City. They face off against you and you alone, meaning the tournament is meant only for you.
Could there be a reason why E.G. Connor has built an elaborate gauntlet solely for you to fight in and win? Is there a reason he makes up an excuse as to why all his rewards and Shadaloo clones are behind locked doors?
It’s quite simple: he’s sending you, the player, a message. It’s part of his game, and he wants you to figure out his message on your own. The message he’s sending? You, the player, will become part of his collection of clones. You are no different than the ones locked away in the Suval’Hal rooms, because you are a clone yourself.
That’s the secret of Street Fighter 6. You, the avatar, are a clone.
In fact, this is hinted at by several characters you encounter, all of whom say something along the lines of “You can be who you want to be at any time.” The idea that you can change your appearance, voice, and even gender by entering a beauty salon shows that you have options and abilities that no one else in the game does. You are essentially a shapeshifter, much like the Copy Fighters, Seth, and even Eleven and Twelve.
Many fighters who mimic the styles of others can do it perfectly. However, there’s one thing that sets you apart: you have complete free will. You don’t exist to fight. You’re learning from everything and everyone to find out what strength is, whether it’s martial arts, vendors, part-time jobs, or regular people. In fact, you have a lot of knowledge about the people you meet. A conversation you have with Chun-Li on her being a civil servant shows that you know enough about her to freak her out (if you choose the right option).
This leads to your real mission: the acquisition of data. It’s clear your avatar already knows things they shouldn’t. From a meta narrative, these are things the player already knows, but in the canon of the game, it means something a lot more impactful: you were created by someone else who gave you basic knowledge. Any of Street Fighter’s bosses could have given you this knowledge, and considering someone named Doctor L runs a salon in Nayshall that allows you to change your physical attributes, it could be that another single-lettered entity was your creator. However, it’s just as likely that a resurrected organization from the shadows or a long-running group that promises to enlighten could be behind your birth. It could even be a blue-costumed code holder, a familiar outsider from a different game, or someone we have yet to meet.
What is clear is that your character has an origin. The concept behind World Tour states that this is your story to create. In reality, it never was your story. You’re simply there to listen to everyone else’s.
That’s what a clone does.
Street Fighter Game Lore Theories 