King Of Fighters XV's newest character, Krohnen, may seem like a new face, but has many familiar traits of a character from an older KOF entry at the height of their NESTs saga story arc. It's not to intentionally overlook the announcement of KOF XV's second beta, which begins December 17 at 7pm Pacific time (4am CET), a brief glimpse into the history of one of King of Fighters' more infamous characters, K9999, may be coming full circle.

K9999 (pronounced "Kay Four Nine) was introduced in King of Fighters 2001 as a violent, short-tempered man barely unable to control his violent tendencies. He, along with several others, are a byproduct of the attempts by NESTs to clone series protagonist, Kyo Kusanagi. Along with Kula Diamond and Angel, K9999 was entered in the tournament to eventually destroy Kula. 

With Igniz's plans thwarted and NESTs literally crashing and burning, Angel and K9999 leaves their organization after learning they were nothing more than guinea pigs for their experiments. K9999, preferably, was a clone of K'who felt the need to destroy strong fighters, including K' himself, to prove himself as being not inferior. The end of NESTs saga concludes with K9999 and Angel vowing to destroy anything that remains of the organization.

Now it's not uncommon for King of Fighters, and other fighting games, to borrow inspiration form other forms of media for character designs. Benimaru Nikaido, for instance, is heavily influenced by Jean Pierre Polnareff from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, what with his flamboyant personality and signature hairdo. Or the dozens of Bruce Lee clones sprinkled throughout (Jann Lee in Dead or Alive, Street Fighter's Fei Long, and Marshall Law from the Tekken series, to name a few) The design of the K9999 character, however, resembled Tetsuo Shima from the 1982 manga Akira VERY closely.

His mannerisms, attacks, and lines of dialog emulated Tetsuo so closely, it ventured from mere inspiration into practical copyright infringement. Likely not wanting to see a lawsuit, SNK did everything possible to ensure K9999's appearance was completely scrubbed from canon story lines and the character never appeared in another King of Fighters entry since 2003.

In King of Fighters 2002: Unlimited Match, K9999 was reskinned and renamed "Nameless". While still borrowing many moves and animations, this new character, Like K9999, still borrows Kusanagi DNA and emulates some of his flame conjuring powers, with mild unstability. Nameless responds to Kula, mistaking her for his deceased Isolde, in his pre-match animations. With these changes, it seemed unlikely that K9999 in his iteration would never appear in another King Of Fighters game ever again.

So is Krohnen K9999? It doesn't take much to see the strong comparisons, with some notable redesigns. The yellow shirt, the biomechanical arm (significantly less fleshy), and his fiery desire to want to fight a Kusanagi. More of his official story will be soon to come, it can be speculated that while Angel managed to escape from the remnants of NESTs that still exist, Krohnen may not have been so lucky. 

King Of Fighters XV will be released February 17 2022 for the PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, XBox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC.