Abigail

"Don't think you'll get by me so easily! (あなたは私がとても簡単に手に入るとは思わない！)"

- Abigail to Haggar

Abigail (アビゲイル) is a video game character who debuted as the penultimate boss in the beat 'em up game Final Fight, before appearing as a playable fighter in the Street Fighter series starting with the second season of Street Fighter V. He is a hulking brute of gargantuan proportions and former enforcer for the Mad Gear Gang.

Appearance
Abigail is an extremely large man with a maple leaf logo flat-top haircut. His attire in Final Fight closely resembles a white version of that worn by the Andore family, but he is keen to point out that he is not one of them. He usually wears facepaint, but in Mighty Final Fight, a non-canon retelling of the original Final Fight with chibi sprites, he is seen without facepaint.

Abigail's height and weight makes him the tallest character in the entire Street Fighter franchise, and the second heaviest, only being surpassed in weight by Gill.

In Street Fighter V, his tanktop sports skull prints, tire track prints on his pants, and tires worn as both rings and large armbands, the armbands with "Mad Gear" painted on them in white. On a wallet chain on the back of his pants are two tires worn through it, and around his neck is a black leather spiked collar. His fingernails are painted dark gray. In a possible manner like Birdie, who is designed to be like a bird in fashion, Abigail's overall features come to give him the similarities of a bulldog, which are portrayed as relentless guard dogs in popular media.

His first alternate costume is similar to his default attire but he wears a welding mask to conceal his face, blue jeans, and one of the shoulders of his tank top is ripped. A large tire is stretched diagonally across his body.

His second alternate costume has him shirtless, but accessorized with a pair of goggles and large tire shoulder bands with chains draped across them. His black flap top hairstyle becomes red, shoulder length dreadlocks, he also gains a red, walrus mustache and holds a crookedly bent nail between his teeth. His tire-track marked trousers are suspended by a belt with a cog as a buckle. On a minor note, this outfit is most reminiscent of Skull Cross Gang member Caine.

Personality
Abigail's personality is like that of most other stereotypical rev heads; despite being in a gang and being an expert on vehicles, Abigail is shown to be quite dimwitted, hot tempered and childish. He always likes to pretend he's driving a car and making bad impressions of car noises. He is also known for getting upset and can start crying when he thinks someone has stolen his car, even if he lets his friends or subordinates borrow it for a day, such as Axl, Roxy and J.

He is not malicious or antagonistic though, as his win quotes against Chun-Li ("Keep your nose outta my business, copper. I'm totally legit now.") and Nash ("Why so moody, pal? Try smiling! Ah ha ha ha ha ha!") indicate that he has both put his Mad Gear days behind him and is akin to more of a jock with crude humor and a one-track mind, but fairly jovial.

Concept
During the development of his playable appearance in Street Fighter V, Abigail's designs included one close to his original Final Fight appearance, a face-paint version, a version where he wears death masks of Mad Gear members on his shoulders and knees and two kinds of version where he has make-up and wears fur.

Much like how Hugo is based off of Andre the Giant, Abigail is seemingly based off of Canadian born Édouard Beaupré, who is one of the biggest wrestlers in history at 251.4 cm (8 ft 3 in). His overall name and use of eye makeup refers to heavy metal singer and lead vocalist King Diamond and the eponymous album Abigail. Similar makeup was seen on WWF wrestlers The Ultimate Warrior and the Road Warrior Animal of the tag team The Road Warriors.

His incarnation and Story Mode in Street Fighter V, as well as how he keeps around a few former members of Mad Gear in a legitimate business in Metro City, may refer to the black comedy series It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia. Notably, the character Frank Reynolds, as played by Danny Devito, is stated to be the "muscle" of The Gang and is the entrepreneur who is skilled at making money, and once portrayed a popular wrestling persona known as "The Trashman" in the episode The Gang Wrestles For The Troops.

Background
Poor Abigail had one of the worst lives a child could have starting out. To say he was cursed from the crib is sadly nothing but an understatement. He was born with a female's name and was bound to it forever. Through the torturous years of school, he was continually tormented for his rather unusual name, forcing him to take it in and ignore it. Albeit much larger and stronger than most of them, Abigail was told not to use violence and anger to solve problems, as it would just end up making things worse. Although this seemed like good parenting for a growing schoolchild, it actually caused Abigail's social capabilities to deteriorate to the point when even his small circle of friends began to drift away from him.

At seventeen, Abigail decided to leave home for good and find his own place in the world. Due to realizing his parents taught him to not use violence, he began to grow a loathing for them. But in the streets of the crime capital Metro City, the only real chances for him to fit in were in the city's many gangs, but not all of them proved to be what he hoped. Continuing to wander, he unknowingly found himself in the territory of a local street gang. A dozen thugs soon noticed the newcomer, and, unhindered by his size, ganged up on the giant.

Curling up to absorb the punishment, Abigail held still. However, within the depths of his soul, a dark flame of rage began to brew, awakened by the blows Abigail continually had land on him. Suddenly, without warning, Abigail lashed out, not letting his childhood memories hold him back. Having had enough of the torment he suffered for his whole life, he stood up and exploded, hurling his foes and letting loose devastating punches. The few who survived Abigail's rampage looked in terror at the hulking leviathan that stood before them, ran screaming and left the unfortunate to their demise.

Almost a week after the incident, words of Abigail's tremendous power reached the ears of the Mad Gear Gang. In need of a powerful enforcer, Belger, Mad Gear's boss, sent out members to find him. Once they did, Abigail was given a life-changing opportunity: a high spot in the gang's hierarchy. Happy beyond words to have a group who finally accepted him regardless of his name, Abigail joined the gang and put the past behind him once and for all. His dominant strength and insane rage would serve him and the gang well as he took control of the Metro City Bay Area.

Final Fight
Abigail was by now a top lieutenant in Belger's Mad Gear Gang, in charge of the city's Bay Area. When Haggar's daughter Jessica was kidnapped by the gang, Cody and Guy took a shortcut through the Bay Area on their way to Belger's penthouse. It was there they encountered Abigail, who told them:

"Hey, cool down. She must be having a good time with Belger!"

At this, Cody rushed to save Jessica from Belger's hands, leaving Guy behind to deal with Abigail. After a difficult fight Guy managed to beat Abigail.

Street Fighter V
Prologue - 'Fierce Beast'

After the events of Final Fight and the fall of Belger, Abigail supposedly renounced his life of crime and started a mechanic's garage in the Metro City Bay Area called "Abigail's Scrap Metal," hiring fellow former Mad Gear goons J, Axl and Roxy who also assumedly live at the garage with him.

Thinking that his car was missing, Abigail was standing around, crying and making various bad impressions of car sounds. He is encountered by Ibuki, Zangief, Juri and Vega who were puzzled and insulted by his behavior. This was specifically due to his habit of making really bad impersonations of car noises (in the cases of Ibuki and Vega as he was making the sound of a fart and a pig respectively), saying he felt "flat" which insulted Juri by making her think he was talking about her bust size and crying/booing Zangief. Only Alex was able to recognize Abigail's sounds (in this case, a 6.5 liter V8 Turbo Diesel engine) on which one is Abigail's missing car, but two of them fought anyway just because Abigail needed to vent his anger out on something.

After that fight, J, Axl and Roxy show up and remind him that he originally let them borrow the car for the day. The trio mock Abigail for forgetting this, causing him to fly into a rage and thrash them all into the car as he walks away casually.

Other character story appearances

 * He appeared in Cody's character story, where Cody beats him up for illegal parking.

Cameo appearance
Abigail makes a background cameo in the Mad Gear Gang stage in Street Fighter Alpha 2 and in the Mad Gear Hideout stage of Street Fighter X Tekken and Ultra Street Fighter IV.

Fighting style
Very powerful, Abigail uses no finesse or any specific style in his fighting, just brute force. He picks up his opponents and throws them around like rag dolls. He can occasionally turns red with Max Power, which swells his muscles, thus making him stronger and uses running body slams. Abigail has also shown he is deceptively agile despite his massive size and little speed, being able to perform a perfected front flip via his Giant Flip attack and being able to perform a very quick roll from the starting position of his Nitro Charge. In Final Fight One, "Alpha Cody" (a non-canon unlockable character who is the Cody seen in Street Fighter Alpha 3 somehow reliving the past) notes that he hadn't been terribly impressed by Abigail, asking whether he still stuck to "using only one attack pattern". In Mighty Final Fight, one of his humorous attacks is to pick up his opponents and kiss them.

Moveset
In Street Fighter V, Abigail's playstyle is more of that of a striker like Balrog in contrast with Hugo's wrestling style, possibly in order to deviate the former from the trend of large, hulking characters who are often grapplers. He and Hugo may have moves that charge towards the opponent, but Hugo does so in a way to set up throws as a wrestler whereas Abigail likes to bulldoze and pummel them like a brute. Additionally, Hugo's strikes set up his grabs, whereas Abigail's grabs set up his strikes.

As he often states in victory quotes against speed-orientated characters, he cares little about speed or even a balance between power and speed; all he's about is hitting hard to cripple his opponents and is able to take hits from fast combos. However, this does not mean that he cannot pull off some devastating combos himself, because while his moveset consists of slow, hard-hitting attacks that are typically seen with other large characters, his moveset have two deadly throws (Abigail Smash and Bay Area Sunrise) and a clever use of canceling between unique and special moves will really bring the fullest extent of the damage he can deal.

Trivia

 * Abigail is similar to Abobo from the Double Dragon series, most notably Abobo's appearance in Double Dragon (1995), and his abilities are also similar to Abobo's such as fury attacks and increased muscle mass.


 * Abigail is the Street Fighter series' first playable character from Canada.


 * Abigail is also the first playable Final Fight character in Street Fighter V, and the eighth Final Fight character to appear playable in the Street Fighter games.


 * Abigail's Street Fighter V theme is a heavy metal remix of his original battle theme from Final Fight. The Metro City Bay Area stage (which is the stage where Abigail was originally fought) also contains another remix of the Bay Area music from the same game which was first played in his reveal trailer.
 * Abigail's theme from Street Fighter V is also the second theme to have lyrics over the entire song.


 * Despite being the tallest character in the series, Abigail is the second heaviest; Gill, despite being shorter than Abigail by over a foot, weighs 161 lbs more at 745 lbs.
 * Albeit being 8 feet tall and nearly 600 pounds, every other character in Street Fighter V can somehow still throw him just as easily as they could with someone of normal height and weight like Ryu, but this is likely just for gameplay reasons.


 * In Street Fighter V, Abigail is the only character that can't be knocked into any of the stage knockout zones, likely because he is too large, which would make several of the knockout animations look strange or even cause them to clip, thus possibly glitching the game.


 * His Street Fighter One route arcade ending in Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition is based on his encounter with Cody in Final Fight. After Abigail told Cody about Jessica having a good time with Belger, Cody beats up the smaller gang members but Abigail managed to surprise him at some point and beating him, as well as taking him prisoner and locking him in a room with a lit pack of dynamite (which references Final Fight's continue screen).


 * Abigail's colors 11-15 reference the Andore Family in this specific order; Andore Jr., Hugo, F. Andore, U. Andore, and G. Andore.

Gallery
Abigail/Gallery

Quotes
Abigail/Quotes

Sprites
Abigail/Sprites