Video Game / Bloody Roar

The unrelenting call of the wild courses through my body. The tremble of these fingers cannot be stopped. The real me... the facade of a man crumbles, and my true self awakens, with a primal scream!

—First game opening narration, by Paul Eiding

A fighting game franchise published by Hudson and co-developed with 8ing. The series centers around humans who can transform into animals called Zoanthropes.

The fighting system (somewhat reminiscent of Fighting Vipers) is a basic 3 button layout with a punch, kick and beast change. The special thing about this franchise is the ability to morph into a beast form with access to different attacks, special moves, and essentially another health bar. The latter bar is charged with damage dealt and received when in normal form, then takes over for most damage received when in beast form (while also allowing a small amount of the damage dealt to the health bar to be regenerated while in beast form), the difference being that depleting the beast meter simply brings that fighter out of beast form.

There are 5 games in the series, most of which were released on PlayStation consoles.

• Bloody Roar (aka Beastorizer) (1997)
• Bloody Roar 2 (1999)
• Bloody Roar 3 (2000)
• Bloody Roar Primal Fury/Extreme (Similar to 3 in terms of assets, but otherwise, a completely new game) (2002)
• Bloody Roar 4 (2003)

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This franchise provides examples of:

• A.I. Breaker: A viable strategy in 4 is simply withdrawing and putting distance between you and your foe, waiting for your opponent to charge, sidestepping, and then hitting their blind side. No joke. Ironically, 4 fixed an issue that was common with the AI in previous entries: they are susceptible to being thrown the moment the match starts, and they are unable to properly register when you do a side step.
• Alice Allusion: Alice turns into a white rabbit.

• Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: In Bloody Roar and Bloody Roar 2, if one selects most characters in their alternate costumes and watches them transform into beast mode, it will be noticeable that some of their beast modes' coloration will not be found on their real-life animal counterparts. For instance, one costume of Gado's in the first game has him turn into a bright blue lion with an orange mane. This has been averted starting with Bloody Roar 3, where their coloration is closer to real life, with the notable exception of Shenlong, who turns into a violet-purple tiger normally and a scarlet-red tiger in his alternate costume, presumably as a result of tampering with his genetic code in the process of cloning him from Long.
• Amazonian Beauty: Shina is noticeably buffer than the other females. She also has a few... distracting costumes. Did we mention that she's French? Being a mercenary since she was a child, she also is most likely the strongest of the ladies physically, thus averting Muscles Are Meaningless.
• Animal-Themed Fighting Style: The games revolve around fighters who can transform into werebeasts. Naturally, every character's fighting style takes some influence from their respective animal.
• Animal Wrongs Group: The ZLF is a thinly-disguised Animal Liberation Front (ALF) parody.
• Anime Hair: Quite a few characters, with Gado probably taking the cake, as his hair resembles a lion's mane.
• Animorphism: The whole game features characters who transform into animals.
• Anti-Villain: Xion (Type I). He could convincingly be read as "amoral."

• Artificial Stupidity:
  • The AI will never counter throws, at least not in the beginning of the match where you can get close before the match begins, and get a throw in as soon as it starts. They are also unable to catch up to side-stepping players in time to change their strategy, allowing savvy players to dodge their attacks with ease.
  • 4 did fix these for the most part, but created one more glaring issue: The opponents will drain their health in favor of refilling their beast gauge so they can go into their beast form more often. Even if they did this with the intention of using their beast drives, said beast drives don't even inflict much more damage than a regular combo string. Basically, they're deliberately killing themselves for little appreciable gain.
  • In the case of Dragon Ryoho, whose health bar is almost depleted when faced as the final boss, he will happily use beast drives, which cost him parts of the beast gauge. To put simply, he is able to turn himself into a One-Hit-Point Wonder. It seems that the best way to balance this out is to make his beast drive really powerful, but that can be dodged.
• Ass Kicks You: Busuzima, going for the gusto, not only sits on his foes' faces, but cuts farts as well. The Nonomura family (Alice, Uriko, Mitsuko) appears to be fond of this type of attack, as does Greg.
• Back from the Dead:
  • Bakuryu from Bloody Roar 1 got rebuilt as a robot in Bloody Roar 3 as an unlockable character (known as Kohryu), and even received his own story in later games.
  • Stun, too, who died after 3, had a clone come back for Primal Fury/Extreme, then the original came back for some reason in 4.
• Badass Adorable: Uriko is a standout here, being an adorable teenage girl who can turn into a strong yet adorable Cat Girl.

• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Yugo and Alice, natch. One's a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, the other's a Type B ("deredere") Tsundere. She even delivers a Bitch Slap to Yugo in her ending from Extreme/Primal Fury because he was being reckless and could have gotten them all killed. She then turns around and cries.
• Bishōnen Line:
  • Uranus and Ryoho's Hyper Beast modes allow them to stay human, while Cronos turns into a humanoid phoenix capable of going from 0 to 60 on your ass.
  • To a lesser extent, Uriko exhibits some of this in her playable appearances, as her Cat Girl form merely looks a Little Bit Beastly as opposed to being a full transformation; hence her title of "Half-Beast".
• Blessed with Suck: In some way or another, just about all of the more powerful characters (i.e. Uriko, Uranus, Xion, Ryoho, etc.) get bowled over with this.
  • Cronos, by far, has it the worst. An oddity among Zoanthropes, Cronos was a rare specimen with two Beast forms. Unfortunately, Cronos has little control over his Phoenix form, the more powerful and more destructive side of his persona. During his childhood, it's heavily implied that his Phoenix form went berserk, wiping out his entire home village. The number of casualties was great, and his mother was (apparently) among them.
  • Long hates his Zoanthrope genetics, as it was this power that killed his younger sister. When his beast form starts showing signs of becoming a separate (and evil) entity in his ending in the first game, he goes into self-imposed exile for five years to beat it.
  • Ryoho has a dragon that's been sealed within him, who has the power to destroy the world. Depending on who you play as, he may not even be aware of this!
• "Blind Idiot" Translation:
  • Lots of typos and grammatical errors present in Bloody Roar 4, especially with the game's inability to differentiate "its" and "it's", and that's just a common error. Doesn't help that the subtitles either don't match up, or are misread without a retake.
  • Bloody Roar 1 was undecided on how to spell the main antagonistic corporation (Tylon, Tyron, Tyrone, etc). The second game settled on the name Tylon.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Happens with Uriko, Kenji, Xion, and Nagi:
  • Uriko was brainwashed by Tylon into becoming the ultimate beast. She's rescued after she's defeated.
  • Kenji was brainwashed into resuming his former life as the assassin Bakuryu. Yugo manages to snap him out of it.
• But Not Too Foreign: Alice's father was Japanese, while her mother was an American of German descent.
• Button Mashing: Long, Shenlong, and Uriko have fighting styles that focus on large combos and this.
• Cain and Abel: Xion (Cain) and his sister Nagi (Abel).
• Calling Your Attacks: A number of attacks across the series are accompanied by various shouts. Parodied by Busuzima, with one attack accompanied by him simply shouting "Kick!"
• Came Back Wrong: Stun, or to be specific, his clone.
• Captain Ersatz: You're lying to yourself if you say that Nagi isn't Kasumi with less clothing.
• Cast of Snowflakes: Each character is instantly recognizable, even before they change into various animals. Even Long and Shenlong, the only two characters who have the same beast form, can easily be told apart from one another.
• Characterization Marches On:
  • Shenlong, who started out as irredeemably evil and refused to believe that he is a clone. Upon facing Long, the man he is based on, he goes mad from the revelation. Since then, he went on to live a life for himself, enjoying life more, appears to be on good terms with Long and Uriko, and becomes more rational with each game.
  • Gado as well. He was a Blood Knight in the first game who loved to start fights in honor of his fallen comrade, Yugi. In later games, he takes a more passive role of representing Zonathropes in talks of them co-existing with humans, having apparently eliminated his violent tendencies.
• Charged Attack:
  • Gado's very own Falcon Punch! Shina's got it, too.
  • Greg, whose Wind Up Punch is very similar to Jack's Megaton Punch.
• Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys: Averted completely with Gado the Lion and his daughter Shina the Leopard. Not only are they both French, they are decorated mercenaries known for their courage, fighting skills, achievements in battle, and for being two of the series' most prominent badasses, Gado being a Living Legend in-universe and one of the more manly males in terms of appearance, personality and fighting style, and Shina being a tough-as-nails Tomboy who is capable of obliterating entire platoons singlehandedly, and that was when she was only 14 years old.
• Cherry Tapping: Alice's basic crouch punch in the first game. Just watch out for Fox, who will bitch slap you for being so cheap.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome:
  • Fox and Greg never came back after the first game. Mitsuko stops being playable, but is still referenced by other characters over the next couple of games, being the mother (adopted in one case) of two characters that do appear in every other game - Uriko's storyline in the second game even revolves around rescuing her from the ZLF.
  • Cronos and Ganesha, who were major characters in Bloody Roar Primal Fury/Extreme, suddenly disappeared from the franchise entirely in Bloody Roar 4.
• Cliffhanger: A few endings, particularly where Ryoho gets murdered. One where Reiji faces the members of the clan he escaped from, and another where Xion and Nagi destroyed the unborn and passed out while Mana mourns for Ryoho.
• Clone Angst: Shenlong initially loathes Long, conflicted by the fact that he was cloned from him (the truly noticeable differences in appearance between the two being Shenlong's red eyes and, in beast form, white fur, most likely due to genetic manipulation). He eventually gets over this and mellows out, his role towards Long becoming significantly less antagonistic, to the extent of a friendly rivalry of sorts. It's even implied from the opening of Extreme/Primal Fury that he's friends with Uriko, Long's student.
• Clothing Damage: Self-inflicted, since they rip their clothes when morphing into animals. The clothes come right back on when they morph back. Magic Pants do wonders, right?
• Combat Stilettos: Alice, Jenny, Uranus, and Nagi.
• Combos: It's a fighting game, so this comes naturally. Long, Shenlong and Uriko have particularly long combos with several ways to flow between moves and several moves to finish with.
• Comeback Mechanic:
  • Primal Fury aids losing players by expediting the rate at which their Beast Gauge fills, regardless whether inflicting or receiving damage. Thus, the lower their health, the greater the gain per hit.
  • Bloody Roar 4 featured a mechanic which allows you to recover the beast gauge by sacrificing part of your life gauge.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Ganesha. Shina and Busuzima can also do their third Beast Drives with no problem.
• Cool Shades: As if you needed more persuasion that Gado was a badass Cool Old Guy, check out his outfit from 3.
• Creepy Child: The final battle of the first game looks like it will be against a little girl, who glares at you and then erupts into a more adult form, which in turn erupts into a massive beast.
• Cursed with Awesome: In general, the Zoanthropes. This can, however, cross over into Blessed with Suck, thanks to persecution, abduction by the Nebulous Evil Organisation for research and experimentation, and Power Incontinence.
• Cute Bruiser: All of the females, but the best example is probably Uriko.
• Cute Clumsy Girl: After her revamp in 2, Uriko learns a Kenpo style mimicking Long's. However, if a player makes even the slightest mistake during her inputs, Uriko can easily mess up and fall over. Being something of a ditz, this makes sense, although Uriko is much more capable than you'd think, given that she's implied to be the strongest of all the Zoanthropes. In typical Lethal Joke Character fashion, Uriko (with the right tempo) can whip out infinites that can juggle her opponent to death.
• Cutscene: They came in full force in 4; previous games settled almost entirely for still scenes with text that were, outside of 2, restricted to the ending and, if you were lucky, the beginning.
• Dance Battler: Not only can Cronos kick your ass with no effort, but he does it while doing the tango!
• Demoted to Extra:
  • Bloody Roar 4 had the new characters, including Xion from 3, take front and center compared to the rest of the cast who don't have any real story connections, besides being zoanthropes and most of them just following a nine tailed fox (Mana in beast form) as to explain their inclusion in the plot. The only exception being Yugo who does play a part in Nagi's ending, and even he barely gets a bit more screen time than the rest of the Bloody Roar veterans.
  • Earlier on in Bloody Roar 2, Mitsuko (who was one of the eight playable characters in the first game) gets hit quite very hard with this trope, having been kidnapped by Shenlong and the ZLF, which prompts Uriko to come to her own mother's rescue. Even after being saved, Mitsuko never returns to being a playable character and is only mentioned in-name from within Uriko's storylines of the later games.
• Divergent Character Evolution: Oddly, a clone of Long got his moves while Long himself got this in Bloody Roar 2, though this was reversed in 3. Yugo has a similar case, where his moveset was massively changed from the second game on (owing to him becoming a professional boxer in-story in the five years between them), while his expy from the manga Fang, as a secret character in Extreme, has a slightly-varied form of his BR1 moveset.
• Downer Ending:
  • Bloody Roar 4 has a few endings that qualify. One in particular, if you beat the game as Xion, he murders Ryoho in his unborn form before Nagi comes by, Mana goes into her beast form and releases the unborn from their subconsciousness, allowing the duo to destroy it before passing out as Mana mourns for Ryoho.
  • In Primal Fury/Extreme, there is almost no ending where Ganesha survives.

• Emotionless Girl: Uriko in the first game, along with being a Tyke-Bomb; justified due to the experiments done to her. After she was saved, in every game from 2 onwards she's much more peppy.
• Enemy Within: Ryoho's Dragon transformation, which was so powerful that it needed to be sealed away from time to time. It should be noted that his Dragon form isn't necessarily good or evil, more like initially rampaging.
• Evil Laugh:
  • Xion after winning in Beast Form, or during his Beast Drive in 3.
  • Uranus also gets a pretty sinister laugh from time to time, most notably in 4.
  • Same goes for Cronos, although it's more like "Ha ha! You suck and I'm much better than you!"
• Evil Twin: Shenlong to Long, Kohryu to Bakuryu, and (somewhat) Uranus to Uriko.
• Expy:
  • In-series, Mitsuko and Greg got nixed for Stun, while Fox got nixed for Jenny. Then there's the whole Bakuryu situation.
  • If you think Long bears an uncanny resemblance to Citan Uzuki, you're not alone.
  • Likewise, Xion's design screams Pegasus.
  • In-universe, Yugo gets one in the form of Fang,◊ a character exclusive only to the worldwide versions of Extreme and PF and a Canon Immigrant from Maruyama Tomowo's two book tie-in manga, Bloody Roar: The Fang. He looks and acts just like Yugo, even sharing his moveset from the first game (acting basically as a Palette Swap for Yugo), a rabbit girlfriend (Mashiro), and beast form (the wolf). Word of God confirms that the parallels were intended.
• Fake Difficulty: The Final Boss from Bloody Roar 4 can break through your own guard. And his attacks deal more damage, like half a gauge. Furthermore, losing to him simply ends the game. The trade off is that it is possible for the final boss to lose almost (if not all) of his health just for performing beast drives.
• Fake Longevity: Bloody Roar 4 features Career mode. Similar to Weapon Master in Soul Calibur 2, it is a road map to play through different fights and even unlock some content for the main game. The problem is that the final unlock, Dragon Ryoho, takes 100,000 points to unlock, and all the levels only allow a maximum of 96,000 to be awarded. Repeating a fight doesn't grant you the full point reward (for example: a new stage may grant you 400 points, but replaying that stage after the first time only grants 80), requiring you to fight at least 50 more times just for that final unlock.
• Fanservice:
  • Almost all female characters. Notably Jenny, who replaced Fox from the first game, is featured on the US box arts for Bloody Roar 3 and Primal Fury, and has a zoanthrope form that is oddly "cosplay-friendly" to better describe it.
  • Shenlong too, complete with him hardly wearing a shirt in 3.
  • Depending on the game, Alice is either shaped like a realistic rabbit, or this.
  • Gado, he's pretty muscular and his outfits are sleeveless and torn, sometimes he's shirtless.
  • Fan Disservice: Busuzima in 3, whose ass has the crest on it. Likewise, his ending implies that he got probed.
• Fantastic Racism: Much like the X-Men, humans come to resent the Zoanthropes over time. A good portion of the cast, like their mutant counterparts, are trying to induce peaceful relationships between both species.
• Fartillery: In Primal Fury, one of Busuzima's grabs involves him farting in your face. It's one of his more powerful grabs.

• The Fighting Narcissist: Fox. He prides himself as the most beautiful fighter. This gets to the point that he hates morphing into his Beast Form, simply because he sees it as ugly (despite the fox being one of the more attractive forms in the first game).
• Flanderization:
  • Uriko went from a teenager who is incredibly skilled (thanks to being trained by Long) and shows excellent promise in skill, and may play a huge part later (as implied by Extreme/PF), to a complete and utter ditz in 4. To a minor extent, she is only involved in the plot of 3 because she was bored.
  • Yugo did enjoy a good fight and held a career as a professional boxer, but he demonstrated that he is perfectly capable of running an agency to help Zoanthropes, and is not one to back down from destroying an artifact that is the cause of trouble in 3. By 4, he is portrayed as a Dumb Jock, demonstrating his clumsiness and being too head strong.
• Forgotten Friend, New Foe: Averted with Shina and Cronos. We know that they have a connection (and the two actually remember one another after being separated for so long), but the games have yet to divulge anything more than that. The two are also on good terms after being reunited.

• Gaiden Game: Primal Fury and Extreme, set between 3 and 4 based on a sidestory, to the point that they've often been mistaken as simply slightly-enhanced GameCube and Xbox ports of 3.
• Girlish Pigtails: Alice, until Extreme/PF. Complete with blue hair.
• Gonk:
  • Dear lord, Busuzima. Even in human form, he has a creepy smile and face, an Overly-Long Tongue and long fingers that make him look more like a human lizard than a man.

• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Yugo has an X-shaped scar on his forehead, while Gado has a scar running up his left eye along with several more on his arms. Shenlong has a scar running up the left side of his face, while Fang has a single scar on his forehead like Yugo.
• The Grappler:
  • Stun appears to be either a homage or possible answer to Tekken's King, given that he can chain grapple to form lethal combinations.
  • Ganesha joins the roster in Primal Fury and also has the ability to perform brutal combos by linking various grappling manuvers.
  • Shina has an impressive arsenal of throws as well, including several that make use of her legs. Among these are a flying leg scissor and an aerial takedown.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: It rarely happens, but it's possible to injure yourself with your opponent after knocking him/her into the wall. It's also hilarious.
• Guest Fighter: Yugo pops up in DreamMix TV World Fighters, a Mascot Fighter featuring characters from Konami, Hudson, and Takara.
• Guide Dang It!: No one knows how to do Shina's third Beast Drive. Or Busuzima's. No one who requires oxygen, at least.

• Happily Adopted: Shina, the adopted daughter of Gado. Kenji is Yugo's adopted younger brother, and Alice was adopted by Mitsuko, also making her Uriko's older sister.
• Hired Guns: Both Gado and Shina are former mercenaries.
• Hospital Hottie: Alice, before joining the W.O.C. (The World of Co-Existence), a non-government organization dedicated to bringing about peaceful relations between humans and Zoanthropes.
• An Ice Person: Cronos' penguin form.

• Jiggle Physics: Not just the boobs, but the guys' muscles as well! Much more apparent in Primal Fury and Extreme, as the physics are promptly demonstrated at the character selection screen.
• Ki Manipulation: Long and Shenlong employ a bit of it.
• Killer Rabbit: Quite possibly Alice, even though she's not the Blood Knight kind.
• Killer Robot: Kohryu, a mindless clone-robot of the first Bakuryu who is a rival/enemy of his successor. Comes complete with a Rocket Punch and Macross Missile Massacre!

• Last-Name Basis: Long, Gado and Busuzima are almost never referred to by their first names (Shin/Jin, Alan and Hajime, respectively).

• Legacy Character: The mantle of Bakuryu. It first belonged to Old Master assassin Ryozo Kato (who was liquefied soon afterward), before being passed on to his apprentice, Kenji Ogami.
• Lethal Joke Character:
  • The Penguin will kick your ass. This is a counterbalance to Cronos' Phoenix form, which can bite off chunks of your health almost instantaneously, but only can maintain the transformation for about 15 seconds. His Penguin form is weak and severely lacking in the range, speed, and strength departments, but is a hard target to hit. All of this is mitigated by Cronos' human form having above-average stats.
  • The first game featured Greg, a weak, slow, and generally useless gorilla. However, he has a throw that can be spammed an infinite amount of times, leading to an amusing way of beating the last boss.
• Light Is Not Good: Xion. One of his Beast Drives creates a Holy Cross out of light. Considering that in English, his name could be read as "Zion" instead of "Shion" (the Japanese equivalent), this might be intentional.
• Limit Break: Beast Drives, first introduced in 2, which deal incredible amounts of damage at the cost of forcing you back into human form afterwards.

• Mad Scientist: Busuzima. Everything he does is For Science!, and for getting the rest of the cast to recognize his genius and take him seriously for once.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Aside from the obvious implication that as a "Half-Beast", Uriko is a cat girl (or werecat, as evidenced by her adult form), Nagi is a Spurious. The word spurious (an adjective) means "to be false/not genuine." In biological terms, it means a structure that has a comparable appearance but nonetheless has a diverse structure, thus explaining why Nagi's Beast Form is so distinct from the others and greatly resembles her regular self (in fact, her incomplete transformation seems to resemble a red, feminine version of Xion's Unborn form).
  • Ganesha is a god in the Hindu pantheon, known for his elephant head. Guess what Ganesha's Beast Form is.
  • Alice has a rabbit transformation, which makes sense in terms of Wonderland...
  • Let's just say Uranus and Cronos are named after deities for a reason... Curiously, their namesakes are parent and child, which just adds more fuel to the "Uranus is Cronos' mother" theory.

• Mission-Pack Sequel: Bloody Roar Primal Fury/Extreme qualifies. It takes many of the graphical and gameplay assets from the third game, while giving the existing characters new costumes and adding on two new characters (plus a third in Extreme) and continues the story, setting it in a tournament setting. It fits the criteria so well that many had mistaken Primal Fury/Extreme as an Updated Re-release or even a straight-up port of 3.
• Mr. Fanservice: Fangirls seem to be crazy for Shenlong.
• Ms. Fanservice: Nagi's Spurious form retains significantly more human-like traits than any other character. And still she's hot.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Xion the Unborn.
• Nebulous Evil Organisation: Tylon and the ZLF mostly, though neither lasts very long past their initial games.
• Never Trust a Trailer: The advertisement for Bloody Roar 4 claimed to have 18 playable characters. This counts Ryoho and Dragon Ryoho as different characters, and singles out Mana, even though she fights exclusively with Ryoho. It also claims that there are 8 game modes, which is stretched thin since training and sparring are virtually the same (the difference is that the AI opponent will fight back), and Com Battle is considered a "game play" mode.
• Ninja: Yugo's brother, Bakuryu, the original Bakuryu who trained the second, and his clone, Kohryu.
• Ninja Log: One of Kenji's Victory Poses. Not to be outdone, Kohryu uses a steel construction girder to achieve the same effect.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Kohryu is a ninja robot oni mole. Busuzima is a punk rock scientist chameleon. Uranus is a sexy psychic lava-Tyrannosaurus-bull lightning clone prisoner.
• Noble Wolf: Yugo, the mighty and heroic wolf.
• Noisy Nature: Or rather, noisy Zoanthropes. A bit more justified, as they're human-animal hybrids, and their various roars and barks are actually battle cries as they beat the crap out of each other.
• Not Blood Siblings: Yugo and Bakuryu, along with Alice and Uriko.
• Not Just a Tournament: Each tournament revolves around diplomatic tensions between Zoanthropes and humankind due to experiments being conducted on Xoanthropes, behind the scenes. The tournament itself is merely a front to lure the strongest of their kind to be test subjects, by pitting them against others of their kind with legendary beast power... or genetically enhanced super beings.
• Oh, Crap!: During the final battle with Uriko in the first game, you're in a caged-off arena. When she turns into the Chimera, steel walls slam into place with "EMERGENCY MEASURE" flashing on them. Someone off-camera must have had one of these moments.
• Older Alter Ego: In the first game, Uriko goes from this◊ to this◊ upon tapping into her powers. Judging by her ending in Extreme/PF, she briefly assumes this form again to save Cronos' life.
• One-Man Army: Stun can take on a full army of security guards (obviously).
• One-Winged Angel:
  • Uriko in the first game is the only character to get two beast forms rather than one. It is justified, though, as she's only a child in this game, and too young to fight in her human form.
  • Ryoho in his dragon form is this, though he isn't evil.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: (Alan) Gado and (Hajime) Busuzima are only ever addressed by their last name in the games. Gado's daughter, officially named Jeanne Gado, is also only ever called "Shina" or "Marvel" depending on region.
• Our Werebeasts Are Different: Every character is some sort of werebeast. There's a weretiger, werelion, wererabbit, werefox, werecat, wereboar, weremole, werebat, werechameleon...
  • Our Werewolves Are Different: A boxing werewolf.
• Panthera Awesome: No fewer than five characters just by the second game. Gado (lion) and Long (tiger) debuted in the original, with 2 adding Shina/Marvel (leopard), Uriko (half-cat), and Shenlong (another tiger).
• Parental Substitute: Ryoho is a father-figure for Nana.
• Playing with Fire: Cronos' phoenix form, Yugo during his second Beast Drive, Ryoho.
• Panty Shot: If you're able to run out of time if you're playing as Alice (or if you're fighting against her) in 3, her "Time's Up" animation has her collapse to her ankles, with her legs spread sideways and looking down, allowing the player to have a brief look at her panties (which is best seen in her first two costumes).
• Power Echoes: Upon entering Hyper Beast Mode in later games, the fighters' roars deepen and become heavily distorted. Nagi's Spurious form also has an echo effect.
• Power Floats: Uranus is above gravity, apparently. Same goes for Uriko in 1.
• Power Glows: Hyper Beast Mode give each character an electrified Battle Aura with a yellow glow. Cronos' hand also glows during one of his intros.

• Put on a Bus: Fox and Greg simply disappeared after the first game. Mitsuko is a different case: while she also hasn't been available outside of 1, her status as Uriko's mom keeps her gravitating around the second game's story, where she's been kidnapped and Uriko is fighting to rescue her.
• Randomly Gifted: Zoanthropy is seemingly randomly developed. The exception is Busuzima, who apparently made himself into a Zoanthrope after he began working for Tylon.
• Red Baron: As a child, Shina was known as "Fighting Marvel" due to single-handedly obliterating a platoon of soldiers. In the Japanese releases, she's exclusively addressed as such.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Among other examples, Nagi (when controlled by the Unborn) and Ryoho (when he loses control of his Dragon transformation).
• Remember the New Guy?: Yugo apparently had a thing with Nagi in Bloody Roar 4 despite only being introduced then.
• Retcon: Beating Shenlong's story mode in Bloody Roar 2 ended with him disemboweling himself, much to Long's horror. Later games feature him being perfectly fine, and even having reconciled with Long.
  • In Yugo's ending of Bloody Roar 3, he destroys the Unborn. This is completely ignored in Bloody Roar 4 and instead claimed that it was sealed.
• Ring Out: An instant win for anyone who pulls it off, though it takes some doing to break the walls and allow it.

• Sharp-Dressed Man: Gado has also been seen wearing business suits and sunglasses in several artworks.
• She's a Man in Japan: The feminine, crossdressing Fox in Bloody Roar was made female for the European release. That is one manly-looking woman.
• Shirtless Scene:
  • A scant few fighters go shirtless, and while costumes have undergone drastic changes between 1, 2, and the rest, one thing remains true: at least two characters go shirtless in their Beast Forms in every single game.
  • Greg, from 1, is an exception—in his base form he's always shirtless, but has the decency to wear a nice hat with it (until his opponent knocks him down). Reiji is also always lacking in the shirt department.

• Shout-Out:
  • Yugo very closely quotes South Park in his introductory cutscene in 2.
    Yugo: They kidnapped Kenji! You bastards!
  • Gado's outfit in 2 is extremely similar to that of un-tuxedo'd Rugal Bernstein.
  • Perhaps it's a stretch, but Stun's real name is Steven Goldberg.
  • Some of Stun's moves in his beetle form resemble certain Kamen Rider attacks.
  • Xion's beast form is clearly inspired by the Guyver, while Nagi's is a very clear shout out to Witchblade. Oddly, Nagi heavily resembles Masane Amaha, whom she predates by about three years.

• Spinning Piledriver: Bakuryu's 1st Beast Drive, which begins with an explosion of leaves.
• Split Personality: Nagi has a part of Gaia in her blood and goes crazy when she's under control of the Unborn. Long shows some signs of this in his BR1 ending, but it's never brought up in later games.

• Stripperiffic: Shina enjoys fighting in a bra a lot. And then there's Nagi, whose bra is revealed a lot, and fights with a very short skirt. And then there's Jenny.
• Super Mode: In almost every game.
  • The first game's console version has "Rave," which can be activated any time you're in beast mode. It increases your strength and speed and allows you to chain your normal and your special attacks together.
  • After skipping a generation, Bloody Roar 3 introduced "Hyper Beast Mode." This time the player character gains boosts to regeneration as well as speed and attack, and infinite Beast Drives (which normally instantly brings them out of Beast Mode) while it lasts, but at the cost of rapidly draining the beast gauge and being unable to transform at all for the rest of the fight once it's over.
  • Primal Fury/ Extreme changed this up again — Hyper Beast Mode can now be done as much as you want, but doing so without a full beast meter costs a good chunk of health.
• Supernatural Martial Arts: It's a fighting game series about a group of people who can transform into werebeasts. That's as "supernatural" as it gets, even before the sequels started moving away from the pseudo-science of the first few games.
• Ultimate Life Form: There's convincing evidence for both Uriko and Uranus to have claim to this title. There's also hints that the two are closely related, perhaps even being one and the same.
• Updated Re-release: For the US release anyway. Primal Fury and Extreme are both the same game on different platforms (GameCube and Xbox respectively), with the difference being that Extreme uses CG for cut-scenes instead of animation, and Fang is an unlockable character.
• Villainous Crossdresser: Fox (Hans in some versions), the aforementioned narcissistic Dude Looks Like a Lady fox. He works as a psychotic assassin for Tylon and is extremely effeminate. He accidentally kills his mother in the process, and snaps. Oh, and he's British.
• Warrior Prince: Cronos.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Ryoho is a textbook SNK Boss. He's got a bunch of extremely easy-to-hit moves with high damage and can chew your life meter out in a few seconds. But if you're using Uriko, all of his attacks will go over her head and he will be completely vulnerable to all of Uriko's moves.
• White Hair, Black Heart: Reiji. Cronos avoids this, while Xion is more a matter of how decent or nasty he feels like being on any given day.
• Will They or Won't They?: A few teased couples, notably Yugo/Alice and Gado/Jenny.
• The Worf Effect:
  • A pro boxer like Yugo getting trumped by Busuzima of all people in the story of 2. Of course, that was before Villain Decay hit Busuzima like a truck.
  • Zig-zagged with the opening to 3. On the one hand, it shows off Xion by dedicating the second half to scenes of him brutalizing most of the cast, even shrugging off one of Gado's most powerful moves. On the other, after everyone tries to rush him at once and he unleashes a particularly powerful attack, Yugo recovers, prompting Xion to take a step back, before Yugo starts to demonstrate his new second Beast Drive.
• Wrestler in All of Us: How many wrestling moves can you count?

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