Cody (Final Fight)

Cody (コーディー), who is given the full name Cody Travers in Final Fight: Streetwise, is a video game character who first debuted as the lead character of the 1989 beat-em-up Final Fight. He would appear as a playable character in Street Fighter Alpha 3 and later Final Fight-related spinoffs. An American street brawler, Cody is a proclaimed "fighting prodigy" who specializes in wielding a knife.

In video games
Cody first appears as the lead character of the 1989 beat-em-up Final Fight, where he is one of the three playable characters in the game, with Cody being the well-balanced character of the trio. In the game, he is a martial artist whose girlfriend Jessica has been kidnapped by the Mad Gear Gang. He teams up with his friend and rival Guy, and Jessica's father Haggar, to defeat the gang. In the game, he wears hand wraps, a white t-shirt, blue jeans, and tennis shoes.

After the events of Final Fight, Cody is mentioned in the SNES sequel, Final Fight 2, where he is shown in the opening flashback to be the one delivering the finishing blow to the Mad Gear gang's leader, Belger, from within the first game, but Cody himself does not appear from within the second game at all. His absence from the second game was explained in that he was taking a vacation with Jessica during the time of Final Fight 2.

Cody makes a cameo appearance in Guy's Final Fight-themed home stage in Street Fighter Alpha 2, where he is being cuddled by his girlfriend Jessica at the left corner of the stage; if a female character is in front of Cody, he will draw his attention away from Jessica and towards the female fighter for a moment until an envious Jessica slaps Cody in the face and regains his attention. The couple makes a similar cameo appearance in Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter, in which they're among the spectators watching the fight at the background of the "Mall Madness" stage.

His next major appearance was in 1998's Street Fighter Alpha 3, being the fourth Final Fight character to appear in the Alpha sub-series. In this game, Cody had ended his relationship with Jessica (who has since left Metro City to study abroad in Europe) and became a convicted felon, having been thrown into jail after becoming a vigilante. Bored with his peaceful life, Cody had wandered the streets looking for any riffraff he could find, and subsequently beat them into submission until he was finally caught and jailed. Instead of his jeans and white t-shirt from Final Fight, Cody's wardrobe now consists of a blue-and-white striped prison uniform with handcuffs on his wrists (which he is actually able to remove when he taunts his opponent, but fights wearing them anyway) and stubble on his face. His fighting style in the game is modeled after his abilities from Final Fight. During his single-player storyline, Cody is challenged by Birdie and ends up joining forces with his friend and former ally Guy in his fight against M. Bison.

Cody would appear in two subsequent Final Fight games following his appearance in Alpha 3. Final Fight Revenge, an American-developed 3D fighting game based on Final Fight also released in 1998, features Cody from within his depiction in the original Final Fight. In his character's ending, he gets arrested by police officer Edi E. after being framed by the surviving members of Mad Gear and he is shown in Poison's ending wearing the same jailbird outfit he wears in Street Fighter Alpha 3. A second American-produced Final Fight spinoff, 2006's Final Fight: Streetwise, features Cody as the elder brother and mentor of the new main character, Kyle Travers. Cody wears his classic original outfit, but with an orange prison shirt over the t-shirt. Prior to the events of the game, Cody was willingly incarcerated for an unspecified crime committed by Guy, causing a fallout between the two former friends. Upon getting out of prison, Cody's constant fighting had taken its toll upon his own knees, in which he had developed arthritis from within them and that Cody himself was forced to retire from mainstream fighting, becoming a cornerman for Kyle during his run from within Metro City's underground pit fighting circuit. During the events of Final Fight Streetwise, Kyle learns that Cody had been taking a new street drug known as "GLOW", which is said to give the user immense strength and power, but turns them violent and dangerous at the same time. Eventually, Cody is kidnapped by Father Bella (who is later revealed to be the younger brother of Belger) and is used as a brainwashed guinea pig by Bella, who seeks revenge against him for the death of his brother. In the end, Cody regains his senses and helps Kyle defeat Bella.

Cody returns as one of the new characters in Super Street Fighter IV, breaking out of prison to try to cure his boredom. His rival is Guy, who tries to convince him to team with him to fight Seth. In his ending after he defeats Seth, Cody runs into Guy once again and after deflecting Guy's praise, leaves to return to his cell where he claims he belongs. Cody is also featured as a playable character via DLC in Street Fighter X Tekken, with Guy as his official tag partner.

Gameplay
In Final Fight, Cody was the 'balance' character, with both moderate strength and speed; he was also the only player capable of stabbing when armed with a knife. By the time of his appearance in Street Fighter Alpha 3, Cody has gained new special moves and super combos. His trademark attacks are the "Bad Stone", in which he throws a normal rock with the force of other fighter's projectiles, the "Criminal Upper", in which he throws an uppercut that releases a multi-hitting tornado that blocks projectiles, the "Ruffian Kick", a charging kick attack that varies on attack level depending on which button used, and the ability to use a knife lying in the middle of the stage in all of his fights, which Cody can pick up and use.

Final Fight: Streetwise sees an alternate version of Cody, dubbed "Death". As he was chosen by a Metro City priest, Father Bella, to be a living incarnation of one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. This version of Cody has a more demonic look to him due to the fact that Cody was drugged with a mysterious substance that was dubbed "The GLOW" (in reference to how the eyes of the user looked after taking the drug) and has a version of the "Criminal Upper" that emits a greenish glow; in addition, he gains the ability to throw waves of green energy that travel along the ground like many projectiles in SNK fighting games, as well as the ability to rain green energy down around himself.

In other media
An episode of the American Street Fighter animated series titled "Final Fight" adapts the plot of the same game, portrayed as a slow-witted, short-tempered character with a southern accent. In the episode, Cody and Guy, after learning that Cody's girlfriend and Haggar's daughter Jessica was kidnapped by the Mad Gear gang, go off to fight them on their own accord while Ryu and Ken are hired by Haggar to infiltrate the gang in order to help find and save his daughter; Cody knocks Belger from the top window of his penthouse (although Belger is not killed), and rescues Jessica. He also appears in some of the Street Fighter comics by UDON.

Reception
Cody's reception was mostly positive. Cody was ranked 45th top Street Fighter character by UGO.com. He was one of the seven characters that IGN wished most to see in Street Fighter IV, while WhatCulture included him among ten fictional characters they wished to see appear in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3. In 2012, Complex ranked him as the 38th "most dominant" fighting game character, as "a shining example" of "a fallen hero becomes a kickass crook when being the good guy gets boring", adding: "Who else you know can manage to fight with handcuffs on the whole time?" In the official survey by Namco, Cody was the 16th most requested character to be added to the roster of Tekken X Street Fighter on Street Fighter side. The actor Robin Williams stated that he named his son Cody Williams after a video game character, which is believed to be Cody from Final Fight.