Due to criticism from Western fans over the character "Lucky Chloe", Katsuhiro Harada stated that she was to be made exclusive to the Japanese and European versions of the game. Harada took to Twitter after seeing a thread about the character on NeoGAF calling her a "furry Vocaloid idol." He posted, "By the way, are you 'Western' only one bulletin board?" [sic] "Hello small world. I'll make muscular & skinhead character for you. Remember, I said we've more new characters and She is ONE on THEM." This was stated as a joke by Harada, though news outlets began to report that this would actually be the case.

Tekken producer Katsushiro Harada had the idea of adding an Arabian character into the series' roster since 2009, wanting to first visit the region to get a sense of its people and culture. Shaheen's final design was created with the help of fans across the region, even appearing on newspapers in Bahrain.

The gender of Leo has been brought to question over the past several game. While Harada has confirmed the character to be female during the Cologne premiere of Tekken: Blood Vengeance, in game Leo is almost always referred in gender-neutral terms. It has also been confirmed that Leo's full name is Eleanor Kilesen and was given a bikini costume in Tekken Tag Tournament 2. This all changed in Tekken 7 when Leo was officially referred to as a male through both Yoshimitsu's and Leo's bio page.

Within the last few weeks before Tekken 7's release, Bandai Namco released 8-bit videos animated by Dutton Films acting as recaps of the previous Tekken games.

According to series producer Katsuhiro Harada, Morrigan Aensland from Darkstalkers was considered as a guest character for the game, but the idea was dropped after realizing making the character could take a lot of time.

According to the game's director, Katsuhiro Harada, the reason why Roger Jr. wasn't a playable character in Tekken 7 was due to the controversy regarding Greig Tonkins, a zookeeper who punched a kangaroo in order to rescue his dog from it during a trip in Australia. Bandai Namco later faced backlash from the animal rights organization PETA, who petitioned to have Roger Jr. removed from all Western versions of the game entirely.

According to Tekken series' director Katushiro Harada, 2B from NieR: Automata was originally meant to be a guest character in Tekken 7, however the team decided she would be a better fit for the SoulCalibur series, thus leading to her appearance in SoulCalibur VI.

According to series director Katsuhiro Harada, he came up with the idea of including a character based off former United States president Donald Trump the same night he won the 2016 presidential election. He asked producer Michael Murray if there were no licensing fees for including characters based off the U.S. president, citing "a lot of buzz" around Trump as a reason for including him.

Both Harada and Murray then briefly discussed the character's fighting style and Rage Arts while in an Uber rental car in San Francisco the night of the election, until they eventually decided to scrap the idea entirely when their Uber driver became upset and started driving at speeds of 200 km/h while calling out "Fuck Donald Trump".