Charlie Nash is the Kenny McCormick of the world of Street Fighter, dying every other day.
Here’s a look at Ol' Zigzag Hair’s history.
Death is pretty meaningless in fighting games, even more so than comic books.
Charlie is the biggest and best example.
Everyone is familiar and static.
Hes alive, hes bloodthirsty, and his flesh is stitched together.
is pretty unique, even if his fighting style is similar to Guiles.
Charlie was the reason why Guile thirsted for revenge.
As explained in Guiles ending, Bison murdered Charlie.
No details were really explained.
Just Guile telling him, Hey Bison, remember me?
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We were left with a name that meant nothing but a reason for revenge.
Capcom didnt show us what Charlie looked like or the details of how Bison killed him.
They didnt need to.
He was already an important gear to the series larval mythos.
M. Bison captured Charlie and had him turned into a vicious super soldier.
I mean really, what is Blankas deal anyway?
Hes a green monster because he survived a plane crash and was lost in the jungle?
How do you even begin to explain that in a way that makes sense?
A year later, Capcom releasedStreet Fighter Alpha: Warriors Dreams.
Rather than just call their new gameStreet Fighter III, Capcom chose an unexpected route.
It was a prequel, taking place between the prior two games.
Ryu had defeated Sagat, but Sagat had yet to join up with M. Bison.
To play up this game, they finally introduced Charlie.
His fighting style was based on Guiles, but a little different.
Unfortunately, the art of prequel storytelling worked against Charlie.Alphatook place beforeStreet Fighter II, making M. Bison untouchable.
Even in their endings, Chun-Li, Rose, and Guy were unable to truly defeat Bison.
I mean, sure, they showed up in sequelslater, but we didnt count on that back then.
Charlie didnt do much better.
After all, he exists for the sake of Guiles rage.
In his ending, Charlie had Bison taken down and called base to report.
Bison got back up, pounced on him from behind, and killed him off-screen.
Therein started a funny little pattern.
Charlie HAS to die because his entire existence is based on that.
Yet they would continue to make more updates toStreet Fighter Alpha.
This time, Charlie fought Bison on a cliff, overseeing several waterfalls.
Charlie took Bison down and questioned him about the military corruption.
Bison smirked and called off any attempts to find the body.
Even if Charlie survived, he would realize that opposing Shadaloo would be futile.
Around this time, Capcom started up their beloved and long-lastingMarvel vs. Capcomseries withX-Men vs. Street Fighter.
In this tag-team game, Charlie was again doomed in his victory.
Despite defeating Apocalypse, Charlie was kidnapped by Shadaloo and viciously tortured in some kind of horrible experiment.
It then cut to Guile holding his dog tags, swearing vengeance.
For some reason, despite being so obviously Guile, the game instead referred to him as Charlies friend.
He kept the hair, though.
He appeared in Chun-Lis ending, which showed the young Interpol officer defeated by Bison.
Chun-Li woke up and wondered what the hell that was about.
Not even joking about that last one.
In her ending, Bison beat down Jin Saotome and left him for dead.
Still, that wouldnt be the end of Shadows legacy.
Naturally, Charlie was still be alive.
His ending for once had everything turn out all right.
After beating up M. Bison, he got in a jet and bombed Shadaloos underground base.
Yay, happy ending!
Unfortunately, that wasnt canon.
Guile chose to team up with his good buddy instead and blow up Bisons base.
I guess this means Shadaloos base was located in Cambodia.
Finally, we had our explanation.
Considering it featured characters fromMega Man,Ghosts n Goblins, andDarkstalkers, it wasnt canon.
Then Guile was shown holding the dog tags and seething about revenge.
Charlie, as it turned out, wasnt so much dead.
Because of the comics huge cast, they pretty much burned through the story as fast as possible.
By the fifth issue, Charlie had sacrificed himself to stop Bison, temporary as it was.
Charlie, disgusted, went to go save him anyway, and a friendship was born.
Then he went off on a mission to stop Bison and died.
Thats why Guile never changed his silly hair style.
It was a weird way of honoring his fallen friend.
Main character Abel was liberated by Charlie and then handed off to some French mercenaries.
Capcom changed the nature of Guiles obsession with Charlie over time.
Instead, as shown through the anime movies andStreet Fighter IV, Guile felt that Charlie wasnt truly dead.
This allowed him to leave his family yet again, only not seemquiteas scummy.
And now I have to talk about Charlies worst-and-yet-maybe-best moment:Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li.
I only saw him inAmerican Pie,and I always felt that he would have hit it big.
I sat and wondered, Why didnt his career take off?
I watched the movie and I knew exactly why.
Folks, if you havent seenLegend of Chun-Li, you really need to do so.
Its the worst performance.
Even Nicholas Cage would feel like Klein needs to tone it down.
Coincidentally, Charlie did not die here.
With the announcement ofStreet Fighter V, Capcom finally decided to let the other shoe drop.
Yes, Charlie did survive after all.
The dude simply will not die!
His body is stitched up like a Frankenstein monster with a mysterious jewel in his forehead.
That means were one step closer to Chun-Li canonically being able to shoot missiles out of her rectum.
