We’re now less than two weeks away from the start of a new era for Tekken, but it’s one built on 30 years of continued history and stories.
During their presentation at the Tekken World Tour 2023 Finals, the developers said they filled the Tekken 8 opening with references to previous titles in the series, and it seems like they weren’t kidding.
Sushibelts and Omega Mishima both made nice videos detailing the references and Easter eggs included in the cinematic intro that’s cool to see put together like this.
Even though it’s not really canon, there is a good bit of love shown to Tekken Tag Tournament with similar scenes like Jin sitting in the empty forest
Tekken 2 and Tekken 5 appear to get the most attention overall, which makes sense with the former being referenced in Jun’s shots as the last time we saw her on the mainline roster as well as Reina doing her own take on Kazama’s walk down the street.
We get a similar martial arts montage on a colored background to Tekken 5’s opening as well, and of course Reina recreating Jin’s iconic throne pose scene just to hammer home that presumption she has that Mishima blood (since hers also has the Zaibatsu’s logo on it).
There also looks to be some nice allusions to the events and character endings in Tekken 4 and 6 to cover most of Jin’s journey through the games aside from the lack of 3, which could partially be due to Kazuya’s absence there.
Both creators go about things in slightly different ways with Sushibelts showing the references side by side on top of the Tekken 8 movie while Omega Mishima goes in a bit more to provide some additional context.
So we recommend checking out these reference showcases below, and let us know your favorites in the comments or any they may have missed.