Zangief

Designed by Akira Yasuda, Zangief was initially conceived for Street Fighter II as a character named "Vodka Gobalsky", planned to be a very strong but extremely slow character to play as.[3] Early designs of the character closely resembled the character's finalized appearance, but with the addition of a black tanktop and anchor tattoo on his upper arms.[4][5] In an interview with Game On!, Capcom Research and Development head Noritaka Funamizu stated that of the series' characters, Zangief was one of the most popular characters with American audiences, alongside Ryu and Guile.[6] According to Street Fighter II director, Akira Nishitani, Zangief's name was taken directly from a wrestler in the Soviet Union.[7]

Zangief appears as a tall, muscular man clad in red wrestling tights and boots, a studded gold belt, and red/gold wristbands. His brown hair is cut in a short mohawk style, and he has a beard/mustache and a large amount of hair on his chest. His arms and legs are covered with scars.

Zangief has always been difficult to use because of his slow speed, lack of projectiles and his best moves require precise timing and difficult input controls. But that was not always the case. When Street Fighter II was being developed, the Capcom team placed a machine in a Tokyo arcade to assess the balancing issues between the characters. One unknown player got so good with Zangief, that he won 85 games in a row with him. In fact, other players wouldn’t even play the game because they feared him. "Regardless of how much we balanced Zangief in-house, this one Zangief expert would win all the time," Street Fighter II creator Yoshiki Okamoto says. Eventually, Zangief was nerfed so much, that this player would occasionally lose. “It is your fault, whoever you are, that Zangief has always been a specialty character!” Okamoto said.

Various actors have voiced the character in his video game appearances: he is voiced by Wataru Takagi in the Street Fighter Alpha and Street Fighter EX series, Tesshō Genda in the Capcom vs. SNK series and Capcom Fighting Evolution, and Kenta Miyake in Japanese and Peter Beckman in English for Street Fighter IV. In anime, he is voiced in Japanese by Tetsuo Kanao and in English by William Johnson. In the live-action Street Fighter film, the character was portrayed by Andrew Bryniarski, who was dubbed over by Ryūzaburō Ōtomo in the Japanese television dub and by Katsuhisa Hōki in the video and DVD dub. In the film Wreck-It Ralph, he was voiced by director Rich Moore. Zangief also appears as a playable character in Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix.

Zangief appeared in Masaomi Kanzaki's Street Fighter manga, which was released in the early 1990s. In his depiction in the comic, he was depicted very much like his video game self. One of his main motivations was to defeat Guile, who as an American, represented the rival country of Zangief's homeland, but found himself coming up short in their battles. In more recent adaptations, Zangief is shown to interact more with Ryu, either as an enemy or ally, and his win quotes in Street Fighter IV imply that it was Ryu who knocked him out of the second tournament.

Zangief appears in Masahiko Nakahira's Sakura Ganbaru! manga, in which he is introduced fighting in his exact same stage from Street Fighter Alpha 2. He first defeats Blanka, and then is engaged by Sakura and Cammy, whom he easily overpowered. He was later defeated by the duo and his friendly and good natured personality soon surfaced.

He appears as a playable character in the crossover fighting Street Fighter X Tekken, with his official tag partner, Rufus.

Zangief appears as a Spirit in the Nintendo crossover fighting game Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. After the player defeats Incineroar from Pokémon and rescue Zangief's spirit, they have access to a dojo where he can teach other spirits the "Overthrow" style.

Zangief placed 18th in the Top 50 Characters of 1996 poll in the Gamest magazine in Japan.[9]

IGN called him "a bit of a stereotype, a hulking lug from Mother Russia, but he plays the type so well, though. Between the Mohawk, the muttonchops, and the all-over bear-wrestling scars, it is hard to imagine a more perfect embodiment of the muscle-bound grappling goon."[10] UGO Networks described him as "an intimidating character to play because he is far slower than other competitors; however, he makes up for that in his ability to close range quickly and bypass and counter projectiles from his opponents."[11] Chris Moyse of Destructoid named his Spinning Piledriver "one of the most famous moves in fighting game history", and described him as "the wrestler with an iron body and a golden heart [...] still considered the de facto grappler of the series".[12] Paste cited his appearance in Wreck-It Ralph as an example of how memorably Zangief had become since his introduction in Street Fighter II, adding "his intimidating presence and lovable demeanor made him a standout of the original World Warrior line-up."[13]

Zangief has also been the subject of academic study. The book Convergent Wrestling noted that his addition along with E. Honda in Street Fighter II set the game apart from other fighting game titles at the time, due to their role as wrestlers, which helped legitimize wrestling among other martial arts. Noting a similar to real life wrestler Zangiev, they also drew comparison to Ivan Koloff, due to both Zangief and Koloff reflecting ties with both the Cold War and the USSR, due to their use of red and gold throughout their outfits. The book further emphasized that Zangief was "a lamination, not of a specific wrestler but of a stereotype" of what people associated with professional wrestling.[14] In a paper titled Tendencies in Representation of Russian Culture in Computer Games, Zangief's design was noted as one of the first attempts at selling a "credible" image of Russian fighters to Western audiences due to the Iron Curtain. To this end it noted that the developers often resorted to certain "tricks" to relay the character's culture to the audience, namely the character's loud and unchanging steadfast nature. However the paper praised that while the character often was displayed with a negative/neutral reputation in the games in their eyes, being a member of a community in Wreck It Ralph was seen as a positive image.[15]