Sodom was mentioned in the Bible, along with Gomorrah, as a wicked city so full of sin that God itself had to obliterate it, or so my extremely sketchy interpretation of the Bible goes. It's been a really long time since I read the Book of Genesis and I never got too far into Exodus before I called it quits, so yeah. Sodom is also the name of a German thrash metal band, and the word itself often has negative connotations for certain acts which would require me to give this post an 18+ tag, and I'm already pushing the line as it is for all the fuckin' casual swearing I do, so I won't get into it. So the impression that a guy named "Sodom" gets across is that they're a very bad seed. The second boss of Final Fight, this Mad Gear lieutenant is notable for being so tough that he's the only boss who fights without any help (except for Rolento, sort of) and you face him in an underground arena at the end of some subway tracks, oddly enough. Built and dressed like a football player but notable for his azure-and-gold masked kabuto helmet and the infamous socks-and-sandals combo, he nonetheless intimidates with his dual swords and his blinding tackle speed coming at you like a jumpscare. He was quite frightening in his debut and was an early high wall for one-credit-clearers to try and get over. It's thus not too surprising at a glance that he would be a prime candidate to enter SF, but what IS surprising is just how utterly goofy they made him in his Alpha debut, for better or worse. Trading in his blades for a less deadly pair of jitte (basically an iron baton with a prong for catching swords), Sodom's true nature isn't really spelled out in the first two games unless you play the Japanese version, where his scare factor flies out the window with this phrase: "DIE JOB DEATH CAR?!"
An utter butchering of the Japanese phrase for "are you okay" ("daijobu desuka"), this side of him isn't made apparent to Americans until SFA3 where he gets to say "meet saw show you" and "kick on see mat show" (I don't know what these mean). So, yeah, they could have gone any direction with Sodom, and they chose to make him a massive Japanophile who has an abominable grasp on the language. That's pretty much his entire thing now, and while I'm mixed on reducing him to comic relief, he makes an interesting contrast to his intense colleague Rolento whose militaristic ambitions are usually not played for laughs. He also has an interesting playstyle which teeters between "rushdown" and "grappler," and I'm rather fond of playing him since it was with him that I reach and beat Akuma in the first Alpha. Those Jigoku Scrapes were OP, man. Still, he's too much of a doofus to have much bearing on major events, and while his cultural botchery was maybe kind of amusing in the nineties, the coining of the term "weeaboo" and the massive spread of Internet hatred against Japanese culture lovers in the 21st century made it an iffy prospect for Sodom ever coming back to the series. At least, that's my theory as to why he's the only Alpha-ite to never have returned between 4 and 5, though there's still time to bring him back to 6 and re-adjust his character into something a bit less embarrassing. Again, if 6 could make Dee Jay amazing, I think Sodom could benefit from some touching-up, even if they have to use his Nintendo-censored name of "Katana" instead. I at least think he deserves better than to have the designers nix him for "not being able to fit him into the story" and then turn around and make Birdie's story "fatty fatty boombalatty." Weak move, Crapcom.
