Ascended Fanon: The identity of Unknown has been discussed for a long time among fans. Eventually, the most popular rumor that she's a One-Winged Angel version of Jun Kazama was made canon... at least in Tag 2.
Possibly (but not confirmed), the existence of Jaycee in Tag 2. During the Tekken 5 era, fans discussed the possibility of Julia becoming a wrestler, on account of her many command grabs and throws back in the (currently defunct) Tekken Zaibatsu.com Internet forums. The discussion on the subject fell off, but by the time Tag 2 arrived, it looks like Harada might have caught wind of it in hindsight and decided to make it happen. For the record, the existence of Julia as Jaycee was canonized in 7, even though Tag 2 is non-canon in itself.
King II's motion capture was supervised by Pancrase stars, namely Minoru Suzuki and Osami Shibuya. Acts as a bit of a full-circle moment considering that the arm lock suplex used by Michelle and Julia was created by Suzuki and taught to joshi wrestlers.
Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: Upon the release of Tekken 5, a Spanish magazine launched an article about the characters of the game, which turned out to be a specially atrocious example of misinformation. The article had Craig Marduk labeled as "Marshall Law", presented Ling Xiayou as come from the future (presumably a misunderstanding from her goal to build a time machine to change the past) and said that Yoshimitsu was Ogre's son.
Creator's Favorite: Katsuhiro Harada has said it's Heihachi Mishima, a character who until Tekken 8 never missed a Tekken game (even though canonically he isn't supposed to be in 5). In terms of gameplay, whenever he decides to participate in community events and tournaments such as Evolution, he plays Feng Wei.
Defictionalization: Before the release of Tekken 7 DLC character Lidia Sobieska in 2021, several content creators were sent a package including, among other Tekken-related items, a letter from Heihachi Mishima to Lidia, as well as a Polish karate black belt with her name on it. Although there was a brief video teaser of her appearance and her Polish nationality, the package was actually the first time her name and fighting style were introduced to players.
Descended Creator: Katsuhiro Harada himself initially voiced the battle cries for Law and Yoshimitsu. He stopped doing so for the former after Tag and the latter after Tekken 5 because he was no longer capable of replicating those sounds. In a different sense, he also counts as he actually enters as a competitive player for the game's tournament during EVO, complete with a team sponsorship.
Development Gag: One of Law's strings is called the "Rave War Combo". "Rave War" was the tentative name for the series before "Tekken" was finalized.
Originally, one of the preliminary names considered for Steve Fox was "Dean Earwicker". While that name was eventually discarded, since Tekken 5 there's always a "ghost" AI opponent using Steve and bearing the name in question.
The first Tekken was this to the first Virtua Fighter. Both were pioneers of the 3D fighting game subgenre by having their characters use polygons instead of sprites and have full 3D battlefields. The former had stages entirely with no walls while the latter incorporated used the ring-out system. Both games even had the prominent involvement of designer Seiichi Ishii.
The first sequel Tekken 2 was rivals to Virtua Fighter 2, Soul Edge and Dead or Alive. All four of them are 3D fighting games that continued the popularity of the martial arts archetype for 3D fighting games. Although Tekken 2 didn't use the Sega Model 2 like its two non-Namco rivals, it was also like them to be the final entry to use 32-bit polygons. Soul Edge expanded on the side-stepping element present in Tekken 2, which was fully refined in Tekken 3.
The critically and commercially acclaimed Tekken 3 was this to SoulCalibur, Dead or Alive 2, and Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike; as the four are among the most well received fighting games ever made. This example is set in stone since the latter of the four has been Vindicated by History. Interestingly enough, the first three examples were each the first in their respective franchises to include sidestepping as a mobility option, in addition to having full 3D character models as opposed to the partial polygon designs in the examples above.
Although it was a hard act to follow, Tekken 4 a competitor to Virtua Fighter 4, SoulCalibur II, and Dead or Alive 3; as they were rival 3D fighting games that were released around the time where fighting game developers were transitioning from arcades to consoles as the former platform of choice was becoming less popular across the globe. English voice acting also became more prominent during this time for the genre.
In the years 2004 and 2005, Tekken 5 was this to SoulCalibur III' and Dead or Alive 4; as they were 3D fighting games released around the time where developers overall were transitioning from sixth generation consoles to seventh generation consoles. Tekken 5 interestingly shares the introduction of character customization with the former.
In the year 2009, a fighter tried to challenge the current flagship fighter Street Fighter IV. That rival was Tekken 6; both games were martial arts-based fighting games that were released in a year where Street Fighter IV essentially revived the entire fighting game genre as a whole introducing more fans to the fighting genre as a whole allowing more competition in the future. It was also the year where the seventh generation of console gaming had reached its peak. The two notably introduced stage transitioning during battle in their respective franchises.
Tekken 7 is this to Street Fighter V due to them being the sequels to the example above and they represent the franchises during the eighth generation of console gaming. It can also be considered a rival to Injustice 2 and Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite as they are also AAA fighting games that were released in the year 2017.
As of September 30th, 2017, the game sold 2 million copies, having outsold both Capcom fighters due to the two being Screwed by the Network. This would make Injustice 2, the only true competitor for the title in terms of sales, which interestingly enough also includes guest characters in its roster (in the form of Sub-Zero, Raiden and Hellboy).
As before, we have Tekken 8 being this to Street Fighter 6. Both are their series' main foray into the The Ninth Generation of Console Video Games, with their releases occurring 6 months between each other.note Of note was that the Tekken 8 release was delayed in part due to Street Fighter 6 itself in order to avoid two major releases in the genre taking the spotlight away from each other. Both have seen praise for similar factors such as their presentation and gameplay, and along with Mortal Kombat 1 helped usher many new players into the fighting game community as a whole.
Dummied Out: There were plans for a "Taekwondo Girl" character, but she was cut before the mobile game's cancellation.
Flip-Flop of God: Around 2012, Harada stated that he maintained a policy not to introduce characters as paid DLC in Tekken. This was likely an attempt to calm the fighting game fanbase down following the shitstorm caused by the scandal of Street Fighter X Tekken, whose DLC characters are not only paid, but turned out to be already on the disc. Tekken Tag Tournament 2 doesn't feature paid character DLC, so the promise seemed genuine. Fast forward to 2017, Eliza and Geese Howard were both revealed as paid character DLC for Tekken 7 (in case of the former, if you didn't pre-order the game). Harada at first stated that this break only affects guests and would never be applied to classic characters, but not only did Eliza, a classic character, disprove this (before the statement went out, no less), a year after release, Anna Williams and Lei Wulong, both classic characters with plenty of history in the series in case Eliza is not authentic enough, were added as paid DLC.
Fountain of Expies: One almost has to wonder if the developers consider Bruce too "vanilla" of a character as his "function" in the roster of 7 has been occupied by three vastly different characters; Bryan Fury is grandfathered in thanks to Divergent Character Evolution while Josie and later Fahkumram embody his moveset and archetype respectively.
God Does Not Own This World: Seiichi Ishii, the original director and lead designer of the series, left Namco shortly after finishing Tekken 2 and has not been involved with the series since then.
Keep Circulating the Tapes: Tekken 3 is the only PS1-era game that isn't available as a PSOne Classic on the PlayStation Store. Harada mentioned that, as much as he'd like to have it rereleased, certain difficulties were preventing it from coming out (most likely licensing issues involving Gon). That said, copies are both cheap and easy to find, and for those wanting to play it in HD, PS1 discs even work with PS3 consoles.
Then the PlayStation Classic, which includes Tekken 3, was announced for December 2018...and unfortunately (and inexplicably) used the notoriously sluggish PAL version rather than the proper NTSC version.
Killer App: Tekken first broke into the mainstream as a result of its exclusivity to PlayStation consoles, with Tekken 3 and Tekken 5 both being in the top ten bestselling games for their respective consoles.
Missing Trailer Scene: A weird video game example (albeit minor). One trailer for Tekken 6 showed NANCY-MI847J's stage as being playable in a standard fight. This is not an option, even via random select.
One of the initial trailers for 7 had Kazumi and Kazuya speak English, implying that the game could have had dual audio tracks in the same way Blood Vengeance and Street Fighter X Tekken did.
Jawad:"No Tekken 3 has the lil' guy Gon is a licensed character."
Katsuhiro Harada stated via Twitter that Lucky Chloe, a controversial new character in Tekken 7, will not be available in the North American version of the game, and jokingly hinted North American players would get a muscular skinhead-type character instead. Michael Murray said he was trolling fans, which was confirmed when she was included in the U.S arcade release.
Two Voices, One Character: For the majority of the roster who do not originate from Asia or speak languages from that region (like Lars and Alisa speaking Japanese despite representing Sweden and Russia, respectively), there have often been discrepancies with their battle grunts and cutscene dialogue where it is made clear that two separate actors are providing the voices. For example, characters like Eddy and Julia retain their voice grunts from 5 despite getting more prominent English voice actors in 6, and in Eddy's case, lost that in favor of a native speaker of Brazilian Portuguese in Tag 2 (similar treatment applies to characters from non-English territories who spoke the language in previous games).
For reasons Harada exasperatedly describes at length here, the developers couldn't possibly retain the same voice actors for most of the characters even if they wanted to. However, many characters, despite receiving new voice actors for dialogue (especially in Tag 2, where many characters began speaking in their native languages), retained older battle grunts by previous VAs through Tekken 7.
Marshall Law's voice actor (not counting the high-pitched warcries) changed from Robert Clotworthy in 5 to David Vincent in 6. Harada stated in an interview that he did the battle cries for the longest time for Law.
Paul's original voice actor since 3 was Eric Kelso, but starting with 5, his spoken dialogue is voiced first by Dave Mallow, then by Jamieson Price in 6 and Tag 2, with Kelso providing battle noises before being fully replaced by Price in 8.
Shiho Kikuchi voiced Kunimitsu and Jun in 2 and Tag. As of their reappearances in Tag 2, they're now voiced by Megumi Toyoguchi and Mamiko Noto, respectively.
Back in 5, Anna was voiced by MMA announcer Lenne Hardt, who would later become much more well-known among Tekken fans as the Large-Ham Announcer for Tekken 8's character trailers. She was replaced in 6 by Tara Platt.
In Heihachi's case, he started by being voiced by Banjo Ginga (in as much as re-using Jack's voice grunts). In 2, he gained new original voices courtesy of Wataru Takagi. However, in 3, he's voiced by Daisuke Gōri, who established himself as one of Heihachi's most recurring/iconic voice, reprising the role up until 6. After Gori's suicide, Unshō Ishizuka took over from Tekken: Blood Vengeance to 7 until his passing. The role was eventually passed on to Taiten Kusunoki starting with the Japanese dub of Tekken: Bloodline.
Nina was previously voiced by Lisle Wilkerson in Tekken 4, but was replaced by Mary Elizabeth McGlynn in Tekken 5. Meanwhile, her battle cries in the earlier Tekken games were provided by Yumi Touma (who, incidentally, would go on to later voice Xiaoyu). Erika Harlacher would voice Nina instead of McGlynn in Bloodline's English dub.
Toshiyuki Morikawa voiced Hwoarang from 3 up to 4 with the latter speaking with a mix of English and Japanese. All his spoken lines in-game were replaced with Jung Goo Lee's lines when 4 was released internationally and then fully replaced by Sang Hyeon Um from 5 onwards.
Lee has two different voice actors: Ryōtarō Okiayu for his Japanese lines, and Kaiji Tang for his English-speaking persona Violet.
Steve Fox is voiced by an uncredited voice actor in 4, Guy Perryman in 5 (whose battle grunts were retained through 7), then Gideon Emery in 6/Tag 2, and a currently unknown VA for 7, with Emery returning in 8.
Jack Merluzzi voiced Raven in Tekken 5; though his voice grunts are retained in subsequent games through 7, since Tekken 6, he has been replaced by D.C. Douglas.
Christie was originally voiced by Xanthe Smith, who was replaced with Lisle Wilkerson after 4. As of Tag 2, she now has a Portuguese-speaking voice actress.
Eddy's voice actor was previously Marcus Lawrence in Tekken 5. Roger Craig Smith provided his dialogues since Tekken 6 onward, although Lawrence's grunts are retained. As with Christie above, he also gained a Portugese VA.
Xiaoyu was originally voiced by Yumi Touma from her debut in Tekken 3 all the way to Tekken 6. The role was recast to Maaya Sakamoto in Blood Vengeance, which stuck for future game releases. As for her English voice actors, Xiaoyu rotated through 3; in order, we have Carrie Keranen in Blood Vengeance, Carrie Savage in Street Fighter X Tekken and Faye Mata in Bloodline.
Julia Chang has gone through three changes in voice actresses: Cara Jones voiced her in her Tekken 3 ending (Hiromi Tsuru did her battle cries there and also voiced her in Tag), while Kimberly Forsythe did her voice in Tekken 4. Annie Wood took over Julia's dialogue and voice cries in Tekken 5, but since Tekken 6, her dialogues and by extension, Jaycee's have been provided by Stephanie Sheh, and Jeannie Tirado took over for them in Bloodline.
Hiroya Ishimaru provided Lei's voice since Tekken 3, and he generally did a good job at imitating a Hong Kong English accent. However, Tekken 6 replaced him with David Jeremiah, who sounds unabashedly American.
Kazuya was originally voiced by Joji Nakata up until Tag Tournament 1. After his return in 4, he's voiced by Masanori Shinohara (to signify his revival), and as the series goes on and despite Masanori Shinohara not having any other significant roles outside of Kazuya, he'll always reprise Kazuya no matter what.
The Japanese dub of Tekken: Bloodline brought back Toshiyuki Morikawa and Yumi Touma as Hwoarang and Nina since they last voiced them in 4 and Tag 1 respectively.
8 has Gideon Emery reprise his role as Steve Fox after being replaced by an unknown actor in the previous installment.
Pre-ordering Tag Tournament 2 will give players access to a Snoop Dogg stage, with the Doggfather himself appearing in the background. Snoop even provides the BGM for his stage; a single recorded just for the game.
Eliza from Tekken Revolution was a pre-order bonus for 7 on all three home platforms. PS4 players received an extra character for pre-ordering 7, as well as several extra character costumes, including King's old Tekken 2 costume, and Jin and Xiaoyu's 4 costumes. Xbox One players got a copy of Tekken 6 for free.
Throw It In!: The sub-bosses appointed to the various characters in Tekken 1 generally had no bearing on their stories at the time since it was designed as an arcade game. In Tekken 2, when the stories were fleshed out, the creators tried to justify the relevance of said sub-bosses. In the case of Paul, they justified his seemingly random choice of Kuma as sub-boss by saying the two were rivals - and thus gave him Kuma to face in the second game too.
Trolling Creator: Katsuhiro Harada is infamous for doing this on his Twitter constantly. The biggest one is him saying that Lucky Chloe will be removed from the US version and replaced with a muscular skinhead in response to some hate tweets. This added even more fuel to the fire in forums, even though he's joking.note As of December 11, 2014, Michael Murray, a senior designer at Bandai Namco, confirmed that Harada was joking. Basically, he is to Namco as Hideki Kamiya is to PlatinumGames.
This backfired on Harada in the leadup to Tekken 7's home release, when an obvious joke answer from an interview where he said animal rights activists prevented Roger Jr. from appearing in 7 got picked up by a number of gaming websites as the actual reason the character didn't show up. Harada had to clear it up on Twitter that he was joking, and the answer was an example of how hard it is to keep the fanbase happy about the game's roster selections.
And the sentiment for the above led into the infamous "Don't ask me for SHIT" T-shirt. Since then, he's continued to be humorously dismissive of entitled fan demands, even tweeting replies to the people who make unreasonable expectations of other game developers. While he does disagree with fan assumptions and expectations (of character inclusions specifically), he is receptive to genuine fan interest and questions.
One concept art for 3 suggests Yoshimitsu would've retained his design from 2 but with his right arm completely missing.
Sega tried to get Tekken Tag Tournament ported to the Dreamcast, and even offered Harada the use of a Virtua Fighter character as a Guest Fighter at no cost. However, this never came to fruition, and the series remained on Sony hardware until the release of Tekken Advance for the Game Boy Advance.
According to the Tekken 6 artbook, Unknown was meant to be Jun's younger sister. This was dropped when TTT became a spin-off. TTT2 then reveals Jun herself is Unknown.
Steve's prototype name was the outlandish "Dean Earwicker", which earned a substantial amount of negative feedback from fans. It was changed to the more natural-sounding Steve Fox. As a nod to this, both a Tekken Force member in 4's Tekken Force Mode and a Tekken Lord Steve in 5's Arcade Mode go by the name of Dean Earwicker.
Harada had wanted to release Tekken Revolution for the Xbox 360, but Microsoft turned down the offer.
A PC port of the original Tekken was announced in 1996, alongside ports of other Namco arcade games like Rave Racer and Air Combat 22, but after that announcement, nothing came of it.
A muscular version◊ of Pac-Man was almost one of the character design choices for the Tekken Revolution poll, but some Namco exec shot down the idea.
Tekken 3 was to include a Joke Character named Sake, who was a salmon who would serve as a mid-boss/playable character and simply flop around helplessly. Sake was Dummied Out because Katsuhiro Harada believed that arcade players would feel ripped off if they were to pick the character. The remnants of Sake exist as Yoshimitsu's model mixed with Jin Kazama's moveset.
This collection of announcer lines taken from from the arcade version of Tekken 4 reveal several announcer calls that went unused in the final game. Noteworthy examples include a rendition of the traditional "Good Morning!" arcade bootup sound (a series tradition ever since the first game, but was omitted in 4 for some strange reason), name announcements for the entire cast of Tekken Tag Tournament (despite only a handful of them make it it in the actual game), name announcements for several prototype names for Steve (including the aforementioned Dean Earwicker), Christie and Lee's Violet persona, and, most notably, name announcements for Jinpachi Mishima and Kinjin, two characters who did not make their formal debut in the series until later installments! (5 for Jinpachi, Revolution for Kinjin.)
In a case of what almost could have not been, Motohiro Okubo - a producer who had worked on both Tekken 7 and Soul Calibur VI - shed a bit of light behind Noctis' inclusion. He stated that as both games had different teams and Tekken 7 was released first, they decided to include Noctis there first as per negotiations with Square Enix. Had things turned out differently, Noctis would have likely entered the Soul Series instead, and Okubo agreed that he would have fit that universe a lot more than Tekken.
Shuwawei, a female taekwondo practitioner was intended to appear in Tekken Mobile. However, due to the announcement of shutting down the entire game on February 15, 2019, Shuwawei will no longer be released as a playable character.
In the PS3 version of Tekken Tag Tournament 2, there was originally going to be an Old Save Bonus to those who bought Tekken Hybrid, which included an HD remaster of Tekken Tag Tournament 1, a demo of Tag 2 and the Blood Vengeance CGI movie. These extras would have been the Blood Vengeance outfits for Xiaoyu and Alisa, the movie's designs for Devil Jin and Devil Kazuya, and Shin Kamiya as a selectable character, who would have been a Moveset Clone of Jin. Everything except Shin was present in the Tag 2 demo but did not make it to the final game due to hardware limitations.
Donald Trump was briefly considered as a possible guest character for Tekken 7, but the idea was quickly abandoned after Harada's encounter with an Uber driver who disliked Trump.
Tekken Tag Tournament Turbo is an updated version of the original Tekken Tag Tournament developed by Namco as a fun little side project. Featuring new animations, a significantly faster game speed, and altered physics to match, it underwent limited location tests in Japan but ultimately never saw the light of day elsewhere until the late 2010s when Harada deecided to bring a cabinet for fans to play to EVO. Beyond those limited location tests, however, it remains unreleased to this day.
Another Guest Fighter considered for Tekken 7 was Morrigan Aensland, who was extremely close to making it into the game as the developers even planned to contact Capcom about their plans. Despite their confidence in trying to stay as true to Darkstalkers for Morrigan's animations, they felt her gameplay would've taken up too much time and scrapped her. It is theorized that the remnants of whatever system mechanics were planned for her eventually went to Eliza, who fulfilled a similar archetype to Morrigan as a supernatural fighter themed after a creature of the night.
medalist Hwang Su Il
