Some time ago, Atsushi Tomita, designer for Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes, revealed some interesting stories that happened during the development cycle for the fighting games that he worked on. At one point, he started talking about how Jin Saotom from Cyberbots became a playable character.
Apparently, Kinu Nishimura, an illustrator working for Capcom at the time, secretly added some content into Marvel vs. Capcom whilst she was also working on the console version of Cyberbots at the time.
“Also, Miss Kinu Nishimura from the design team was actually working on the home version of Cyberbots at the time and secretly added some scenarios to our game during that time,” said Tomita. “Jin’s general pose and entrance, his win pose and things like this.”
Ultimately, it was Nishimura’s contributions that inspired the Marvel vs. Capcom developers to add Jin as a playable character.
“She also did a sketch of the assist Princess Devilotte for us,” continued Tomita. “Having her support available to us like this was another reason why we chose to go with Jin for the roster.”
Jin’s taunt had him stripping down to a fundoshi (a traditional Japanese undergarment) and doing a towel rubdown on his back. This was apparently inspired by a sketch created by Nishimura.
From there, the character designer made it so that the player can actually control how fast Jin actually rubs himself like this based on how quickly they mash the buttons. Doing this fast enough will actually cause him to catch a fire, which actually has an active hitbox. The developers clearly had fun pushing this joke as far as it could go.
“Speaking of all this, I remember that for Jin’s taunt pose we had him strip down to just a fundoshi and do a towel rubdown on himself, which was from a sketch Miss Kinu Nishimura gave us,” said Tomita.
“Our character designer at the time made it so that if you mash the buttons more, he rubs the towel faster and faster and finally he actually catches fire. Our programmer took it even further and made it so that fire had a hitbox as well. I remember that’s exactly how that particular thing happened.”
Source: Event Hubs
