Sodom

Sodom (ソドム) is a video game character from both the Final Fight and Street Fighter series. He first appeared in the original Final Fight game. He was renamed Katana in the North American SNES versions of Final Fight and Street Fighter Alpha 2 due to name issues. He was a top member of the original Mad Gear gang.

Appearance
In combat, Sodom wears tabi and zori, samurai gauntlets, blue jeans, body armor, and a samurai kabuto with a mask.

On the front of his outfit, Sodom has scrawled the Japanese kanji shi (死), meaning "death". However, this kanji is not written properly, and actually has no meaning.

He is never seen fighting without a pair of jitte or katana blades, making him one of the few characters to appear in the Street Fighter series to use weaponry. In the Japanese version of Final Fight, the katana are named Masamune and Muramasa.

Personality
Sodom is obsessed with Japanese culture and considers himself Japanese. He is well-versed in many elements of Japanese culture; a point of humor, however, is that his usage of the language is somewhat dubious, as shown with the kanji on his costume and several of his win quotes.

Final Fight series
In the original Final Fight, Sodom controlled the Mad Gear gang from the Metro City Subway. He was undefeated in underground pro wrestling, albeit due to his use of "foreign objects" (the swords), until he met Guy, as well as Cody and Haggar. At first, Sodom was honored to face a true ninja of Japanese descent like Guy, but this honor would turn into deep shame, as Guy beat him. From then on, Sodom hated Guy for not only being one of the people to rid Metro City of his gang, but for ending his undefeated streak, which proved in his mind he was no match for a true Japanese fighter. The incident also cost him a lot of respect amongst his fellow gang members.

Final Fight Revenge showed Sodom's determination to resurrect Mad Gear (this gang actually seems to be the same Mad Gear in Final Fight 2) and his decision to go to Japan to find strong warriors for the new organization. The new crime syndicate was established all about the world, and was held together by a powerful second-in-command: a Japanese kabuki named Retu. Rolento, Sodom's proclaimed blood brother, was also part of the criminal organization. Guy's fiancée Rena and her father Genryusai were kidnapped by them as part of a revenge plot, but this Mad Gear fell at the hands of Haggar, Maki and Carlos, three acquaintances of Guy. Retu was defeated by Maki and the Mad Gear Gang perished.

Street Fighter Alpha 2
Street Fighter Alpha 2 reveals why Sodom wasn't seen in FF2. He was attempting to find more strong warriors for the gang. He had an argument with Rolento over how the militant man had lost sight of their gang's ideals, to which Rolento snapped back that he had never lost sight, but was simply trying to find a successful way to implement them. The two fought and Sodom lost. Sodom had also attempted to recruit E. Honda and fought him in a sumo match, but failed in both regards.

Street Fighter Alpha 3
After possibly fighting Honda in a friendly rematch, the Japanese aficionado met Rolento again in Street Fighter Alpha 3, where he once again lost to Rolento in another fight over their values. Despite losing, he tracked Rolento down to Shadaloo's base containing the Psycho Drive, and finds Rolento decrying it as a poor attempt to control people. Sodom realizes that Rolento did not lose sight of Mad Gear's ideals, and the two reconcile their differences. They decided to work together toward making a great utopian nation.

Fighting style and gameplay
Sodom is the only character in Street Fighter Alpha 3 whose weapons he uses depends on what Ism is used. If using the X-ISM fighting style, he'll use his katanas; otherwise, in the A-ISM and V-ISM styles, he will use his jitte. This is because his X-Ism visage is based on his Final Fight appearance.

Sodom was notable for being fairly difficult to defeat head-on in the original Final Fight, due to his dash attack being nearly invincible and quite damaging. However, it is possible to defeat him without actually taking any damage at all if the player approaches him along a vertical axis and uses grabbing and throwing moves, since his dash attack can only move horizontally or diagonally. Successful application of the above method can allow the player to easily defeat Sodom without harm, since he and Rolento are the only boss characters in Final Fight who do not have henchmen to back them up during battle.

Trivia

 * Sodom's taunt in the Street Fighter Alpha games, which consists of a generic Japanese bow, actually damages the opponent if used close enough.
 * There are three Sodoms (or Katanas, as the character is referred to as in the English version) known as the Three Katana Brothers in the game "Mighty Final Fight". The game, however, is not canon in the Final Fight series.
 * In addition to the Alpha series, Sodom also appears as a playable character in Final Fight Revenge and makes a couple of cameos in Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix and Mighty Final Fight
 * Sodom can be spotted in the Final Fight themed stage in Street Fighter X Tekken. He wears a kabuki wig and costume along with the other Mad Gear members, and performs a "very original" kabuki dance (which mainly consists of headbanging). After the first round, Sodom appears in the middle of the stage. After the second round, Haggar appears and starts chasing Sodom throughout the stage.
 * Sodom shares some similiarities with Yoshimitsu from the Tekken and the Soul series. Both wear samurai-inspired armor and masks, and both use two swords in combat (although Yoshimitsu hasn't always used two swords in combat). In addition to this, both have a serious and determined personality, but often leave a rather goofy and comical impression. One major key difference between the two is that Yoshimitsu is actually Japanese, while Sodom is not.
 * Poison's win quote against Yoshimitsu in Street Fighter X Tekken says tha he reminds her of Sodom.
 * Sodom is featured in the "Street Fighter Zero" (released as Street Fighter Alpha by UDON) manga by Masaomi Nakahira, in which he fights with the back then brain-washed Cammy. About to finish her off, Chun-Li intervenes, and starts fighting Sodom. Ironically, he unintentionally saves his opponents by holding up a ceiling that falls down on them with his jitte. After the falling ceiling was stopped by Guy, Sodom lets his guard down and gets his mask destroyed by Chun-Li and Cammy, and he instantly ceases the battle while covering his face in shame, as he claims to be unable to fight without his samurai mask.
 * In his Street Fighter Alpha ending, Sodom unfurls a scroll that is meant to read "Mad Gear", using Japanese script. However, the humor lies that Sodom failed to write the scroll in katakana, and instead used the kanji "魔"-(ma), "奴"-(do), "義"-(gi) (miswritten) and "亜"-(a) to phonetically spell out Mado Gia (Mad Gear). Because each kanji has meaning, this appears to the Japanese reader to be a nonsensical coupling of characters: "devil", "guy", "honor", and "to come after" as in a rank or position. "亜" can also mean "Asia" or "mute".
 * One of the swap costumes in Street Fighter X Tekken has Heihachi wearing a samurai armor and helmet looking very similar to Sodom's.
 * There's also a character named Sodom who appeared with another character named Gomorrah working for the crime lord Lean in the Street Fighter II V anime series. It's unsure if this is the same Sodom from Final Fight before his Mad Gear Gang days or a different character altogether, though Charlie Nash in the anime series also looked different from his game appearances as well.