Franchise: Tekken

In an interview with Polygon, the series lead Director, Katsuhiro Harada, confirmed that King's motion capture was performed by Japanese pro-wrestling star and MMA pioneer, Minoru Suzuki. The wrestling star made King's fighting style with a mix of Mexican lucha libre and Japanese puroresu. Harada also said that Suzuki also invented original moves for King and Michelle (as well as Julia in future games). Harada also says that Suzuki also offered to choke him out, to which he said "Yeah, of course dude, I want you to choke me out" and that "it felt like taking a refreshing nap."

King's backstory was inspired by Sergio Gutiérrez Benítez, a catholic priest who moonlit as the masked wrestler Fray Tormenta to raise funds for his orphanage, while the character's jaguar mask design was inspired by Tiger Mask, a recurring masked persona first portrayed in real-life by mixed martial artist Satoru Sayama, and a character licensed out to Japanese professional wrestling companies from the 1968 manga of the same name by Ikki Kajiwara.

Series director Katsuhiro Harada has admitted on multiple occasions that at one point, he tried to get Colonel Sanders, the founder and mascot of the fast food restaurant chain Kentucky Fried Chicken, as a playable guest character. He approached the Japanese offices of KFC to ask permission for Sanders to appear in Tekken, but was given a "bad look" upon proposing the idea and it was shot down.

Issue 65 of Electronic Gaming Monthly reveals that Tekken was originally titled "Rave War" during its beta testing. It was later renamed to Tekken when it first came out on arcade machines. Interestingly, some of Lee Chaolan's combos contain "Rave War" in their name, a likely nod to the original title.

The Tekken 6: Bloodline Rebellion Artbook states that Tiger Jackson came from an early design concept for Eddy Gordo.
Despite initially appearing as an alternative appearance for Eddy, he is later treated as a separate character.

Mokujin was directly inspired by the Shaolin Wooden Men from the 1976 kung-fu film "Shaolin Wooden Men".

In an EDGE magazine interview with Katsuhiro Harada, he states that Paul Phoenix's hairstyle and first name are based on Jean Pierre Polnareff from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Masamichi Abe, a member of the original Tekken planning team, was a fan of the series.

Kazuya Mishima's combat gloves, strongly resemble Star Platinum's gloves from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. In Tekken 3, Jin Kazama has the same combat gloves as both of them, but longer.

Part of the reason Tekken games were initially only released on Playstation consoles was due to the similarities between the console and arcade hardware.