Street Fighter (US live-action movie)

For the role of M. Bison, actor Raul Julia did research on the lives and personalities of various dictators and crime lords, and mimicked many of their traits to incorporate into the M.Bison character (notably Benito Mussolini's hand gestures, Joseph Stalin's mannerisms, Pablo Escobar and his elusiveness and Adolf Hitler's love of art). Julia also approached the role with a Shakespearean tone in mind, viewing Bison as the same type of villain as Richard III.

Director Steven E. de Souza had deferred his own salary to pay for his cast.

According to the cast and crew, actor Jean-Claude Van Damme was not very easy to work with, due to his combination of professional ego and substance abuse. Since he was the lead star on the film, Van Damme got a presidential hotel suite with a gym put into his room. Despite having these luxuries, he would often refuse to come out of the hotel suite or his trailer until he felt ready. When he did finally come out, he would often bring alcohol to the filming set, or take hours to shoot his scenes. Other problems include him doing $10,000 worth of cocaine a week and an affair with actress/singer Kylie Minogue. Director Steven E. de Souza revealed in 2018 interview that Van Damme's cocaine addiction caused so much constant disruptions during filming, that the studio ended up hiring a wrangler to keep an eye on Van Damme, but that wrangler ended up being a bad influence himself. When Van Damme gave an excuse or was a no show for the set, the director would end up filming scenes that don’t require Van Damme in order to make up for lost time.

Kylie Minogue was praised for her professionalism and generosity during the production of the film. She did such things like hiring a club and buying drinks for the entire cast and crew to help make the tough shootings a little easier.

Raul Julia accepted the role of M. Bison because his children were fans of the Street Fighter video games, and he wanted to participate in a film based on the games as he knew they would enjoy it if he was in it.

The gold statue seen in Sagat's business parlor (the reclining Buddha) is the same statue that is visible in Sagat's backdrop stage "Ayutthaya Ruins" from the video games.

The final amphibious attack on M. Bison's compound, which was filmed on location in Thailand, was originally supposed to be an air assault. However, the Thai government wouldn't allow the use of its airspace for a large number of aircraft the scene would require, so the producers changed the final battle to a boat assault instead. This alteration was subtly lamp-shaded in the movie through Guile's line, "An attack from the air is impossible."

During the beginning of the fight Guile between Bison scene, their victory quotes from the Super Nintendo port of Street Fighter II: The World Warrior (1991) can be heard, such as Guile saying "Are you man enough to fight with me?" and M. Bison's response being "Anyone who opposes me will be destroyed!".

The control panels to M. Bison's floating desk are video game arcade controls from both "Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers" (1993) and "Super Street Fighter II Turbo" (1994).

Ming-Na Wen who portrayed Chun-Li stated that she cringed after watching the finished film for the first time, and told her "ER" (1994) co-star George Clooney that she fears that her career would be over. Clooney however casually told her "Oh honey, it takes a lot to kill a career - I should know", hinting at his role in the critically panned "Return of the Killer Tomatoes!" (1988). Many years later, Wen said that she was finally able to look at the film with fond memories.

Jean-Claude Van Damme turned down the offer to portray Johnny Cage in "Mortal Kombat" (1995) to do this film instead.

Because Capcom was a co-financier for the film, this meant that every aspect of production required their approval. Among the things upon their demands, is that the film needed to mandate a December 1994 release date, which required an aggressive filming schedule for the cast and crew to maintain. Capcom had always wanted Jean-Claude Van Damme to be cast as Guile and so they offered him the role and he accepted it. Upon the casting of Van Damme, it required a salary fee given to him which ended up being nearly $8 million of the film's $35 million budget. While after Raul Julia was casted as Bison, the majority of the casting budget had already been spent. This lead the other acting parts to be given towards little-known or unknown actors.

Bison's line and gesture towards Sagat by mockingly telling him "I guess you didn't *see* that, did you?!" was entirely improvised by Raul Julia.

Due to several set-backs, the production of the film was already six days behind schedule by day 10 of the shoot in Thailand. Every time when the producers confronted director Steven E. de Souza with these delays, de Souza simply employed with what he called 'the old John Ford trick' by simply tearing out a page from the script, to get back on track. However, during the editing process, he discovered that several vital scenes were missing, and that the fight scene choreography was lacking cohesion, so sets had to be re-built in Vancouver for the re-shoots.

The cast's physical training was all handled by Hollywood trainer and world karate champion Benny Urquidez. Charlie Picerni was also hired as the stunt coordinator; he took the job on the condition that he can get ample time to train the cast. Director Steven E. de Souza agreed, however problems ended up occurring because Urquidez had no prior experience with instructing video game fighting styles, so it was discovered midway through the shoot that different characters should have different fighting ability styles. More complications arose once it was learned that Raul Julia was suffering from cancer. Initially, there were plans to shoot Julia's less intensive scenes first while the rest of the cast would rehearse with Picerni for the fight scenes later in production; however, due to Julia's poor health, which led de Souza to be forced to switch the filming around. This created situations where the cast would be only be trained moments before filming their scenes. For example, Byron Mann (who portrayed Ryu) wasn’t informed about his knife fight with Vega until a few hours beforehand, so he asked a Thai stunt man to train him on the spot. The real fight depicted in the film was done with an actual blade and not a prop blade, meaning that Mann could have been seriously injured if he had not performed his choreography correctly.

Filming conditions in Thailand were regarded as being harsh at times. The weather was hot and humid, which caused everyone to lose weight, which contrasted with the scenes shot in Australia in which the weather was fine and everyone was able to quickly recouped the weight they’ve lost. Due to a threat of a coup, all of the roads were closed off by the military, this meant the cast and crew can only be transported by high-speed boats and upon arriving at the set, the cast and crew were often soaking wet. The building that was used as the headquarters of the Allied Nations in the film had a tin roof that was riddled with holes. Whenever it rained, the noise of the raindrops hitting the roof was deafening, and when the sun shone, sunlight would seep in through the holes, which would ultimately ruin the ideal scenes for filming. This created so many delays that director Steven E. de Souza often had to resolve by removing various scenes from the screenplay.

Towards the end of the movie, when the A.N. forces first arrived at Bison's fortress, one of Bison's troopers is sent flying from an explosion while giving off the Goofy Holler. A distinguished holler sound effect that is often associated with the Disney character Goofy in his short film series as well as certain Disney animated feature length films. The usage of the sound effect for this movie is one of the few times for a non-animated and non-Disney films to be used.

When filming was falling behind schedule in Bangkok, director Steven E. de Souza contacted the studio bosses in hopes to request additional time to complete the film. However, Capcom already had their hearts set on a Christmas 1994 release to tie in with the planned merchandise, and firmly said no. This forced de Souza into making what is arguably his most contentious decision in order to stick to the filming schedule. In which while he and half of the crew filmed the drama-led, dialogue heavy scenes during their stay in Australia, stunt coordinator Charlie Picerni and the other half of the crew would film some of the movie's stunt-led sequences on a different sound stage simultaneously. This setup eventually led to a heated confrontation between De Souza and Picerni after the former learned that the latter had failed to incorporate many of the Street Fighter characters' signature moves into the action sequences, arguing that they wouldn't look realistic on screen. The pair almost came close to blows with Picerni threatening to walk out of the project altogether.

When Dhalsim was showing Bison his progress on Blanka, the footage on a monitor that consisted of a man being shot in the head was an actual clip of historic footage from World War II.

The oil painting seen within Bison's private quarters of a frowning clown holding a cluster of balloons and wearing Bison's signature cap. Is a parody to the famous "Pogo the Clown" oil paintings that were illustrated by the infamous serial killer John Wayne Gacy.