Despite speculation to the contrary, Sawada is unarmed in the game. The "katana" shown was intended at the time to be a "motion blur"; given a conflict between the two Capcom branches, however, flicker transparency was not applied and it was instead left solid. His slashing attacks were intended to have an ethereal appearance to them, akin to the Hadoken. The designers argued for the flicker effect but were instead denied, and as a result opted for a look based on Mortal Kombat's effects at the time.

Dhalsim was never digitized into the game because of a number of issues. Along with concerns that the actor would not being able to perform the session, they believed that the players wouldn't like the idea of Dhalsim wearing the lab suit from the movie instead of his original design. Along with this there were worries that the actor wouldn't feel comfortable wearing that costume.
In the end, Dhalsim had a small role in the movie so they decided it would be acceptable to simply cut him from the final game.

Gregg Rainwater (T. Hawk's actor in the film) was scheduled to be digitized, but for unknown reasons he never showed up to the arranged session.

Footage of Dee Jay was recorded for the game, but as with a number of characters he was unable to be included in the final release because of time constraints.

This is the first Street Fighter game where Akuma is playable from the start instead of being a hidden character. However, Alan Noon has stated that he intended him to be a secret character, but a combination of events led to him being moved to the default roster.

Sheng Long was once considered to be in the game as a bonus character, but couldn't make it because Capcom was unsure if his inclusion in the game would be a good idea or not.

The games developers were disappointed that Damian Chapa didn't resemble Ken, so they arranged a session in Chicago with an unknown individual playing Ken. According to Alan Noon; "he was a young guy barely out of high school I think, if at all, but he had martial arts training and most importantly: long blond hair. His costume was a red gi, though it did not feature the torn sleeves and pant legs. Instead, his long sleeves were rolled up to his elbows. The shoot went well, and we approached Capcom with the idea that we sub in second Ken for Damian Ken. Capcom ultimately decided that we had to go with Damian Ken however, and second Ken’s raw capture stayed on his CD. We were disappointed at the time, but looking back, Capcom made the right decision with Damian Ken in my opinion."

Emma Kearney digitized Cammy at first, because the crew members were afraid that they couldn't get Kylie Minogue due to her tight schedule. Eventually, Kylie's schedule freed up and Kearney's footage remained unused.

Guile was portrayed by both Jean-Claude Van Damme and stuntman Mark Stefanich. The reason for this was that Van Damme was only available for four hours, so Stefanich was used to finish the session.

Benny Urquidez was intended to play a new character named Raven (whose moveset resembled that of Gen). According to Alan Noon (one of the game designers and artists for Street Fighter: The Movie for the arcades, as well as the live action performer of the game's Bison Troopers), Urquidez was chosen to take part in the game as Raven due the game's lead designer being a fan, as well as having extra time to put in another character. Urquidez performance as Raven was digitized, but the process went unfinished due to time constraints.

Incredible Technologies originally envisioned the game as Street Fighter III during early development. Planned characters included Retsu, Geki, and Lee from the first Street Fighter game, Gunloc from Slam Masters, and Mega Man, but they were scrapped early on when the team was informed the game was going to be based on the movie, and were never digitized.

While Blanka's digitized sprites were created at the same time as the other characters, he did not appear in the Arcade version of the game. However, beating arcade mode with the normally-unplayable "Super Bison" by hacking the character select values will play an ending sequence for Blanka instead of Bison.

Raul Julia, the actor who played M.Bison in the movie, was unavailable for his motion capture segments due to his battle against cancer. His stunt double, Darko Tuscan, filled in for him for sprite production. Raul's only appearances in game are in stills and opening movie clips.