The other famous raccoon from Nintendo's history.

I mean, furthermore, the Japanese raccoon, Tanuki, looks damn like him.

Japanese raccoon dog - Wikipedia

I think this is my phoenix down moment.

In Japan he is called Tanukichi, so yes, he is a tanuki and his name is meant to reference the species. I also didn’t realize that for quite a long time, since the M really throws you off the trail.

Ideally the localizers could’ve found some kind of Wile E. Coyote pun for his name, but making “tanuki” out of common English names or initials is absurdly difficult so Tom Nook is the best they could figure out back in 2003.

Hah I never realized that, but that is pretty great. Credit to the original team that at least tried to get it close.

I guess Nintendo figured "Tom Nookie" wouldn't fly.

Wow. TIL.

Heh, someone is having a "Phoenix Down Moment"

Just wait until you find out about the origins of the name "M. Bison."

@bigsocrates: Ah yes, the Capcom localization train wreck, which includes many other great misadventures, such as “whoops, we blundered into making Poison a trans woman for no reason other than we thought the Western 90s audience would object to fistfights involving a typical woman street thug, and somehow we think this fixes everything.”

@bisonhero: What was particularly weird about that was that Final Fight was created to capitalize on the craze started by Double Dragon, and Double Dragon had Linda, who Poison herself was clearly based on, and nobody really cared. There were also women in Renegade, another beat 'em up. So Capcom created this whole "controversy" in its own little imagination bubble, and then proceeded to "solve it" with a solution that was both misogynistic and transphobic at the same time.

Localization in general used to be so, so, bad. Very occasionally you'd get Super Mario Bros. 2 or Decap Attack but so much more often you'd get stuff that was either incomprehensible or just hot garbage.

I swear someone's made a thread about this on here before.

I did it all for Tom Nookie

M. Bison being a lawsuit avoiding pun on Mike Tyson ain't even the half of it, its the fact that the black boxer character swapped names altogether in the english versions (because claiming a black boxer named Mike Bison wasn't influenced by infringing on the trademark rights of Tyson wouldn't hold up in a yankee court the way it might in a japanese court???)

I’m having a Miles Prower moment here