Ryu's Split Personality As Evil Ryu

The Street Fighter series as a lot of interesting retcons (and bad ones such as Cammy's origins which came some time AFTER the Street Fighter II V Anime). One of them is the addition of Evil Ryu - Ryu's variation that didn't come in until the Street Fighter Alpha series. The form made its debut in Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold which was an update to the original game. Evil Ryu was basically a variation for Ryu like how Chun-Li had her Street Fighter II variation in the same game. The form of Ryu had nearly the same moves except he had a teleport, his shoryuken had more hits (which could potentially override Ken's superior flaming shoryuken), and he gains the Messatsu Gou Shoryu. 

The retcon of Ryu's victory over Sagat (who was still a noble villain at that time) was changed. It turns out that Ryu himself was starting to succumb to Satsui No Hadou (Surge of Murderous Intent) which was the power Akuma had. Akuma was a bonus character in Super Street Fighter II Turbo which was hard to fight since it required you to understand the cheating CPU. Evil Ryu still had the same ending as the regular Ryu. It wasn't until Street Fighter Alpha 3 when Evil Ryu had his own separate ending. There, he fought Shin Akuma instead of Shin Bison as the final boss. I also love how Sagat was inserted into his playthrough with a dialogue. Sagat perhaps wasn't aware that his loss happened due to the Satsui No Hado. Evil Ryu did return in the Street Fighter IV series. Later, Kage became the embodiment of that persona in Street Fighter V after Gouken supposedly vanished the persona forever.

The split personality also appeared in Capcom vs. SNK series and as an alternate mode for Ryu in Marvel vs. Capcom (though using Akuma-based moves instead). I felt that the Capcom vs. SNK version of the character was the best incarnation for the character. I also felt Evil Ryu was poorly utilized in the Marvel vs. Capcom series and could've been placed as early as X-Men vs. Street Fighter as an alternate version of Ryu (to make a throwback to Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold). 

Overall, this was a fun variation of the cool, calm hero.