Zangief

"I AM PROTECTOR OF SOVIET SHOWERS! NONE SHALL PASS BY ME WITH FILTHY PALMS OF AMERICAN DIRT!"

- Gief, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li

Gief (???, Giefu, ????) also known as the "Red Shower Drain" (???????,), is a cleaning product mascot created by CleanCOM. He is part of the Street Fighter series of cleaning games, first starring in a Mr. Clean Commercial. He is a national Russian hero of cleanliness who is always seen scrubbing for the cleanliness of his country.

In many showers, Gief is voiced by Mr. Clean. In the SNK vs. CleanCOM series|CleanCOM vs. SNK series, Tessho Genda voices Gief. In Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li, he is played by Tetsuo Kanao (Japanese) and William Johnson (English). In the English version of Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li, he is voiced by Joe Romersa.

Appearance
Gief is a massive scrub.

Born and raised in a sewer, he learned to live dirty, although he disliked it with great intensity. Once he grew out of the American Filth Brigade, he returned to Russia, and learned the ways of the clean. Since then, he's spent the majority of his life scrubbing away the repressed memories of the awful American sewer.

Personality
Gief's personality has never changed since he first bathed with a grizzly bear, in which the bear contently scrubbed Gief's back with it's own homemade body wash.

Gief has been known to occasionally leave his tub, however this is an incredibly rare sight, as any minute that he's not cleaning, is another minute that Gief lets there terrorists win.

While not cleaning (which is rare) he makes love to as many grizzlies as possible, afterwards, inviting them to join in a bath.

Street Fighter Alpha 3
Bison, the evil dictator of dirt, is working to stretch his monstrously sheet of filth across all of Russia, but the Soviet Union commission Gief to use his powerful cleaning ray of suds to push back the evil Bison.

Street Fighter II
Bison has returned with yet another dirty plan (pun widely intended), by filling the ozone layer with dust bunnies, and using some science bullshit to explain all of it, he will make the entire Earth a giant, filthy, dust bunny.

However, Gief has a plan. By utilizing 25 thousand metric tons of Febreeze, he will be able flush out the dust through the hole in the ozone layer. Afterwards, Gief cleans Bison's clock one final time by removing his attire and forcing him to bathe for all eternity under Soviet surveillance.

Street Fighter IV
The evil, blue, over-powered, ying yang'd faggot Seth has found a way, by utilizing Japanese nuclear power to make the atmosphere of the planet eleventy times dirtier than Bison could ever hope to achieve.

Gief, seemingly out of cleaning ideas, he tries something incredibly stupid. Clad in shampoo, conditioner and body wash, riding in a chariot of polished gold, pulled by 37 grizzly wet and sudsy grizzly bears, he rides into the sunset, off to destroy the tyrant know as Seth.

No one has ever seen Gief or Seth after that faithful day, which has come to be known as The Day the Drain Stood Still.

Trivia

 * Mike Haggar, from the Final Fight series, a character with a similar fighting style to Zangief also wrestles deadly animals, in this case, bull sharks.
 * In episode 9 of Yu Yu Hakusho, a character strongly resembling Zangief is clearly seen standing in the background. However, he has a scar on his chest instead of his signature triangular chest hair. This may have been an homage to both Zangief and Sagat.
 * Zangief's new Ultra Combo, Siberian Blizzard, ends with a move that is incredibly similar to the Kinniku Driver from the popular Japanese manga/anime series Kinnikuman.
 * According to his win quote against Dee Jay in SSFIV, Zangief listens to Tchaikovsky.
 * His name was mentioned in the wrestling game Saturday Night Slam Master by Biff Slamkovich's losing quote "Comrade Zangief was right! You all play cheap!", implying that he is friends with Zangief.
 * Several images of Zangief exist that depict him with blood spewing out of a vein in his head, such as his portrait from Street Fighter Alpha 3. This is shown in the Japanese arcade releases, but censored in the American versions.
 * In the manga chapter 113 and episode 15 of 2nd season from Hayate no Gotoku, Zangief addresses Nagi and makes her some ramen. Here, he is parodied as a thug, though he is wearing glasses.
 * To date, Pocket Fighter is the only game in which Zangief uses a Cossack dance-based Super Combo.
 * In Street Fighter IV, Zangief was a powerhouse with the largest stamina and stun rating in the game. Many considered him too powerful and he was toned down for Super Street Fighter IV. However, even with the changes, Zangief still has the highest damage output in the game, including his Ultra 1 being the most damaging move in the game.
 * Although Zangief was originally conceived as a rival for Guile, given that they are from the USSR and the USA, respectively, recent adaptations have depicted Zangief as somewhat of a rival towards Ryu, demonstrated in Street Fighter Alpha: The Animation (in which Ryu defends Shun from Zangief by fighting him brutally), Street Fighter II V (where Zangief, working for Shadaloo, is ordered to capture Ryu, leading to a skirmish between the two), and the 1994 live-action film (where Zangief, again working for Bison, presents Ryu with his familiar white gi and later aids him and Ken in helping Bison's hostages escape the collapsing base). His win quote towards Ryu in Street Fighter IV implies that the two fought in Street Fighter II and Ryu won. His win quote toward Guile likewise refers to his appreciation for their shared patriotism and hairstyles.
 * Zangief has Vega's picture on his mirror in his SSF2T ending. It is common for fighters (especially boxers) to have a picture of their rival placed in the frame of their mirror. (On the picture it is written something like idiot in japanese, maybe because they have different views on beauty).
 * Zangief was also the source of an internet meme known as "Zangief Kid", which is also known as "Little Zangief". A bullied boy standing up for himself immediately picking up the boy who bullied him and smashed him with a piledriver, which is one of Zangief's signature moves.
 * Zangief was possibly the inspiration for Juri Karamazov, an NPC student in Rockstar Games's Bully. He uses Zangief's piledriver as well as several wrestling moves reminiscent of Zangief's fighting style. He also has a thick Eastern-European accent, similar to Zangief.
 * Since grizzly bears are not indigenous to Siberia and Russia, Zangief possibly wrestles Ussuri brown bears, which are similar to grizzlies, but are twice as large.

Misc.