Street Fighter Villains Ranked

If you are a fan of stories, you will be familiar with the role of the villain. The villain is also known as the antagonist of a story and is the one who comes up against the hero of the story to stop them from achieving their goals. 

Villains are an integral part of any story and they are for many, the interesting part of a tale. ‘A story is only as good as its villain’ is a saying you may have come across and for the most part it is very true. Any good story must have a villain. 

Think of all the iconic villains that have graced your pages, screens and imagination over the years. For instance, we have Long John Silver from Treasure Island, Sauron and Saruman from The Lord of the Rings, and Castor Troy from the action movie, Face Off. You might even have much better examples than these, but imagine for a second if they weren’t in the story and ask yourself if that tale would still have been worth reading or watching. 

Video games are even more dependent on villains with fighting games especially dependent on them. Villains give a sense of purpose to what the protagonist is doing and they act as a motivation for the character to keep getting stronger. By necessity, fighting game villains need to be strong, and Street Fighter villains are some of the most powerful ones, but who is the best? That is what we’ll look to determine on this list. 

It should be noted that this is a subjective list which is the opinion of the author and is not meant to be a definitive listing of who’s the biggest bad. That said, this list will look at the villains and  rank them based on ability, role within the story, and overall villain cool points. 

A couple of other things to note. Firstly, the villains featured on this list will only be those who are still currently villains in Street Fighter’s lore, so the likes of Sagat and Cammy will not be on the list. Also, we will be focusing on characters in the main Street Fighter games, so the Marvel villains and characters like Garuda who only appeared in the Arika developed Street Fighter EX games, will not be considered either. 

Necali

Necali is a villain introduced in Street Fighter V with a lot of fanfare, so much so that the design of the game’s main screen and promotional material featured the aztec warrior. Necali was said to be the emissary of the gods and sought the souls of the strongest warriors to increase his own strength. 

Necali was in the story of Street Fighter V, but he turned out to be a villain that wasn’t well liked and it is very possible that he will never appear again. A lot of this had to do with how he was written. With such a background, in the story he wasn’t much of a threat, losing basically every fight he entered. 

While his design might be impressive, his overall bad guy odometer wasn’t altogether great. 

Juri Han

The South Korean Taekwondo practitioner holds the record as the first true female villainess for Street Fighter and her implementation is quite impressive. Juri is a Shadaloo operative (former) who was one of the victims of Bison’s ruthlessness. Her parents were killed by the mad dictator and she swore revenge. However, unlike Chun li who looks for more honorable means to bring about justice, Juri is instead all too comfortable with bringing misfortune to others as she looks for how to bring Bison down. She does this as an operative of the Shadaloo Intimidation Network with her secret goal to have SIN clash with Shadaloo and ensure mutual destruction. 

She was introduced in Street Fighter IV and at the end of the game had destroyed Seth, SFIV’s villain. In Street Fighter V, she was on hand to bring down Shadaloo, but wasn’t the one to end Bison. A fact that continues to haunt her. 

Juri’s had the Feng Shui engine placed in her eye and it enables her to do things that the normal individual would find impossible. 

Seth

Seth is the major antagonist of Street Fighter IV and is an artificial intelligence made to be a host for Bison. But with Bison’s apparent death, Seth seeks to be the next major villain and even hosts the Street Fighter tournament to capture Ryu and use the Satsui No Hado within him to complete something called the BLECE project. 

Seth loses rather badly to Bison and even has their tandem engine destroyed by Juri. It was also Juri that enables Seth to return. For this reasons, Seth is a little lower on the list. 

This does not mean that Seth is not a threat in Street Fighter and the single mindedness of this character is noteworthy. As to who Seth is based on, their story is a nod to Cain and Abel as Seth was to mirror Abel, a Street Fighter IV character that was also meant to be a  vessel for Bison. Seth, in scripture, is the representative of the new line of humanity after Cain and Abel are gone. Seth returned in Street Fighter V to take Bison down, but would ultimately fail in this task.

Gill

He is the primary villain of Street Fighter III and is the leader of a secret organization known as the illuminati. He and his brother, Urien, are powerful members of the society. 

He is lower on the list because while a villain, he is often portrayed as a character who is looking to fulfil a destiny and can be benevolent to the ones under him. He is by no means harmless as shown in what he did to Alex’s master, Tom, nearly killing him. 

He is also the eternal enemy after he kidnapped Li Fen who is Chun li’s adoptive daughter. This shows that he is not above harming kids which is as evil as you can get. He also had the likes of Twelve and Necro created who are made simply to be super soldiers.  

Gill is a cult leader with the charisma to match which makes him quite dangerous as it means he has legions of fans willing to die for him, and from the looks of it, he doesn’t mind their sacrifice. 

Urien

The younger brother of Gill, Urien is the nastier of the brothers and believes he has the right to be the leader of the Illuminati. He felt so strongly about this that he challenged his brother to a duel. He won and was made the president of the cult. However, he suffered deep humiliation when he discovered that Gill had been promoted even higher to the supreme emperor.

Urien, unlike many other leaders of the Illuminati, was born to parents who were high up in the organization. Urien’s jealousy makes him a very volatile character seen in the Street Fighter V storyline as wanting to destroy Nash who Kolin had worked so hard to get to work for them. 

Urien has tried to overthrow his brother many times, usually losing. Urien’s desire to rule isn’t because he is benevolent, but rather a simple lust for power.

Vega

One of the original Street Fighter villains series, Vega is the beautiful matador and assassin who is said by many to have given Cammy her scar. 

Vega is ranked high up not necessarily because of his power, but because of his utter ruthlessness. He readily tried to kill Chun li, and even tried to harm Eliza Master when the two met. He dislikes anything he considers ugly which has to be some sort of discrimination. 

Vega is also believed to have murdered his step father (who, to be fair, killed him mother) and countless others as an assassin. 

Interestingly, Vega seems to have a softer side which is portrayed in his weird relationship with Cammy. He is the one who kept Cammy in front of the Delta Red building where they found and raised her. He is also seen saving Cammy in Street Fighter V when the Shadaloo headquarters exploded. So, why did he keep her alive? There is still a lot more to uncover about this mysterious fighter. 

JP

The latest villain of the Street Fighter series, JP is a bad man. He is the head of an NGO by day, but gets up to some shady dealings at night. JP was one of the main thrusts of the Street Fighter 6 prequel comics where he is shown to have set up Ken Masters to take the fall for the crime of a terrorist attack on Nayshall. 

JP’s interests in Nayshall are not honest or well meaning. He was involved in the death of Kimberly’s uncle and has shown a sadistic streak when fighting opponents. He does seem to hold some respect for Bison whom he says was a powerful villain and he is intrigued with doing some of the things he did like hosting tournaments to further his illegal agenda. 

Akuma

Akuma has a rap sheet as long as the Nile river. He is the brother of Gouken and a student of Goutetsu. 

Akuma’s brand of evil is interesting as within it, he has his own moral code. Akuma is more than happy to kill as long as it is within parameters he deems acceptable, and for him that has to deal with his quest for ultimate strength. He killed his master Goutetsu and even more or less killed his brother Gouken (although it was revealed later that Gouken survived)

Akuma has leveled an island with a punch, defeated Bison without even so much as a huff and is constantly looking for Ryu to become stronger so he can kill him. 

Akuma has given up his humanity and you wouldn’t be wrong if you called him something else, like a demon. 

As mentioned earlier though, Akuma doesn’t simply kill anyone. For instance, Gen, while looking for a challenge that would kill him faced Akuma and Akuma flat out refused to kill the old man. 

Kage

Kage is the express manifestation of the evil Satsui no Hado or murderous intent. Once hosted in Ryu’s body, the Street Fighter antagonist had fought to get rid of it. 

Kage easily bested Sagat, Akuma, and Ryu, but is unable to find any satisfaction as none of the three accepted him as anything. 

This means Kage cannot be the ultimate baddie, but, as a demon who is utterly and completely devoid of any humanity it does leave Kage capable of doing anything he pleases including killing others.

In the power department, Kage is clearly a force to reckon with as he has Ryu’s powers without the restraint of the world warrior. While hardly the ultimate villain, you can imagine what could be done with a malevolent entity like Kage let loose on the world.

Bison

Could it really have been anybody else? M. Bison is one of the most iconic Street Fighter villains... no, one of the most iconic video game villains ever made and his lust for power has led him down some very dark paths. 

For one, he has dispensed of his humanity with all his goodness now residing in Rose. This means he doesn’t have a shred of goodness left in him and this shows in his actions. He has murdered countless people including Chun li’s father and Juri’s parents. 

M. Bison seeks world domination, and would go to any means to get it including creating several dolls for himself which he could inhabit in the case of demise. Cammy is one of such, as was Abel, and even Seth. There is absolutely no one who matters to Bison as everyone is a tool to be used. 

In terms of pure villainy which sometimes even feels like it is without rhyme or reason, there can be none as terrible as Bison. 

Do you think there is any villain worse in Street Fighter?