Fatal Fury/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Adaptation Displacement: Terry's Cartwright Curse in the anime trilogy, borders highly on Never Live It Down; when people think of his love life they often think of his dead love interests in the anime a lot more than Blue Mary, his perfectly alive one in the games (though the fact that SNK has been doing little Ship Tease between them, if any, in The King of Fighters doesn't help). While Fatal Fury: The Motion Picture was not a bad movie, things like this are one of the reasons why it's a shame that Fatal Fury 3 didn't get a animated adaptation. Of course, if Blue Mary was ever in a 90's Fatal Fury anime, it would get folks to wonder if that would've averted this once and for all or made things a whole lot worse.
  • Awesome Music: All the soundtracks, really.
  • Complete Monster: White from Real Bout Dominated Mind. When you, a one-shot villain, make Geese and Yamazaki look like saints in comparison, you know that your evil quota is a cloth cut above the rest.
  • Crazy Awesome:
  • Cult Classic: Garou: Mark of the Wolves. The fact that it's widely considered to be not only the Magnum Opus for this series, but SNK itself should tell you something.
  • Director Displacement: Masami Obari didn't direct all three Fatal Fury animated properties, he only directed the movie. The two TV specials were directed by Hiroshi Fukutomi and Kazuhiro Furuhashi. Obari was an art director/character designer on all three though, which is probably where people get confused.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Several, so let's get started, shall we?
    • Duck King is very popular among the Fandom. He would have crossed over to The King of Fighters earlier, but lost out to Blue Mary (herself a darkhorse) for the final spot on the '97 Special Team. He was relegated to background status for some more games (there was even a piece of artwork depicting Duck alongside fellow bus-riders Heavy D! and Ryuhaku Todoh), but finally joined the roster in XI. And the Fandom Rejoiced.
    • Billy Kane. A lesser example, but a darkhorse nonetheless.
    • To call Mai Shiranui this would be the understatement of the year. When excluded from the arcade ports of King of Fighters XI and entirely from XII... you'd be better off not knowing about it.
    • Kim Kaphwan, who debuted alongside Mai in 2. Fatal Fury 3 gives us Blue Mary and Yamazaki.
    • Rick Strowd. Some haven't taken kindly to the fact that Vanessa started cribbing off of him (thus lowering his chances of getting into King of Fighters himself), especially when she used his Gaia's Breath P-Power in 2002. Ironically, Vanessa went on to become one of King of Fighters' many darkhorses.
    • At least half of the Garou cast. Rock Howard (who, as The Hero of Garou, is more of a meta example for the SNK fandom), Bonne Jenet, Gato, Hotaru, Tizoc, Khushnood Butt... In fact, the only thing that's stopping Rock from crossing into the main King of Fighters titles? SNK Playmore is "saving" him for the sequel to Garou. Now how long has that title been a pipe dream? Just be thankful that he's made it into Capcom vs. SNK 2, the Maximum Impact titles, and Neo Geo Battle Coliseum. Likewise, interviews say that Butt is one of the most requested characters for the King of Fighters lineup.
    • From The Movie, we have Jamin. A lot of fans want to see him in an actual SNK fighter as a Canon Immigrant.
  • Epileptic Trees
    • Many believe Yamazaki to be the "Gym Buster" referenced in Butt's ending from Garou.
    • A good number of fans see some sort of connection between Rick Strowd and Vanessa, mostly because she stole some of his techniques.
    • Billy Kane's father is (allegedly) the pilot from Prehistoric Isle.
  • Fountain of Memes: Terry. In fact, you'll be hard-pressed to find a meme that isn't about him saying something.
  • Good Bad Bugs: Aerial Canceling, where you could cancel a jump into a special move, was already known to the developers but left in the game because an SNK higher-up thought it made the fighting look more frantic. This technique would be tweaked a bit and appear as part of the mechanics in The King of Fighters.
  • He's Just Hiding: Kim was defeated by Freeman before the events of Garou and apparently goes missing. He shows up to berate his son Dong Hwan under certain circumstances though.
  • Love to Hate: Geese has done terrible things over the course of the series but is beloved by the fandom (not unlike Rugal), cementing him as one of the premier SNK villains (and a more notable fighting game villain from the 90s in general). Geese can do no wrong because the fandom worships the ground he walks on. It doesn't hurt that he's charismatic, has a sense of style, and despite his wicked deeds, never quite crosses the Moral Event Horizon into Complete Monster territory. Oh, and he's an uncontested Badass.
  • Magnificent Bastard: Geese Howard.
    • Laocorn Gaudeamus from Fatal Fury: The Motion Picture also qualifies, even if he's possessed by Mars.
  • Memetic Badass: This applies more to King of Fighters than anything, but some fans see Yamazaki as the SNK equivalent to Chuck Norris.
    • Depending on the fandom, Terry and Joe also qualify.
  • Memetic Molester: Hotaru Futaba, thanks to one of her supers, Flying Queen of Chaos, wherein she kicks you upward, rides you to the ground and.... uh... seems to press your chest, draining your health and chi. Of course the animation makes it more look like she's RAPING you. Now it's hard to look at that move as anything OTHER than full bore molestation. Not to mention Hotaru's animations after the chi burst resemble something akin to post-orgasm bliss.
  • Memetic Mutation: Expect anything Terry says to achieve this status.
  • Memetic Outfit: The famous red hat, red jacket, white undershirt, and blue jeans. Terry changes wardrobe largely in Mark of the Wolves, wherein he gives the hat to Rock and swaps out the sleeveless red coat for a brown, sleeved one.
  • Moe: Hotaru. Dear God, Hotaru. It doesn't hurt that she's also the Woobie of the series.
  • Most Annoying Sound:
    • REPPUKEN! REPPUKEN! REPPUKEN! DOUBLE REPPUKEN!
    • The "OOOOOOOUUUUUUAAAAAAAAGH" sound Andy makes when you hit him. Not so prevalent here but it cropped up quite a bit in early King of Fighters titles. It got ridiculous in '99 onward where for no apparent reason they made it his KO cry. You will hear this especially in 2002 and Unlimited Match, where he groans this practically every time you hit him.
  • Narm: Come on, the anime movies are full of this. From Terry's ridiculously exaggerated Heroic B.S.O.D. and resulting alcoholism because he lost ONE FIGHT in the second film, to the indescribably cheesy ending music in the third one.
  • Older Than They Think: Mark of the Wolves is commonly called a Street Fighter III ripoff for its smooth animation and replacing the entire cast with the exception of the main character, but few know that Art of Fighting 3 had done the same before either of them.
  • Suspiciously Similar Song: Part of Rock Howard's theme, "Spread the Wings," is taken from Robert Miles's "Children." It's purely intentional, as the composer is a fan of Miles.
  • That One Boss: Geese in in general, but especially in Fatal Fury 3.
  • Uncanny Valley: Overlaps with Red Eyes, Take Warning. After you beat White, Dominated Mind shows a cutscene of him falling to the ground in defeat. He tries to get up, and when he opens his eyes, they're nothing but blank red spheres. So terrifying.
  • The Unexpected: Nobody expected Richard Meyer to return in Maximum Impact 2 as a playable fighter.
  • Viewer Gender Confusion: Jin Chonshu. He looks like a little girl, but is actually male. To make it worse, in some of the games, he seems to be wearing lipstick and Guyliner...
  • Woolseyism: Krauser's line "Blood is thick, but syrup is thicker. Think about it."
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Fatal_Fury/YMMV?oldid=1591457"