Hey everyone, this news post is gonna be a little different from some of my other ones; I'm here today to discuss some "theories" I have for the Samurai Asshole character (created by Tom Fulp).

To give a brief recap of who S'Asshole is (in case some of you aren't familiar with him), he originates from an old (and laggy) flash game from 1999 aptly named "Samurai Asshole". The plot of that game is that the titular character's master died by choking on a piece of chicken. From there, S'Asshole goes on to try to avenge his deceased master by attacking the temple he died in, even killing a god for interfering. Afterwards, he's swept up by a spaceship (which is then noticed by a couple of penilians from the Pico series) and at the end of the game, he's wound up in a Smurf village... yeah, typical old flash game stuff.

However, Samurai also becomes a playable character several years later in the crossover fighting game "Newgrounds Rumble". And his design there is drastically different from his original design. But the thing is that his design in NG Rumble was actually supposed to be used for a scrapped sequel to his original game, one that MindChamber was working on; the sprites were already completed and reused for NG Rumble.

Why do I bring up his inclusion in NG Rumble, you may be wondering? Because it's gonna tie into a few theories I have for the character. In case you're curious about what I'm talking about, then sit back and relax, because here are a few theories I have regarding the character, which are based on quite a few observations I've made regarding NG Rumble itself:

S'Asshole owns a garden (and possibly worships some sort of deity)

In NG Rumble, Samurai's stage in the game is known as a Japanese garden. For reference, I'll put up a picture of the stage here (made by the game's artists):

Basically, the area appears to have running water, an apple tree, and notably a shrine of sorts on the left (which I'll get to later in this section). You're probably wondering "but how do we know this garden is Samurai's specifically?" Well, an Author's Comment from the game actually hints at this. Samurai's story mode in NG Rumble is that he's looking for the person who destroyed his village (although we never see what this village is/was), so he attacks various other characters in order to find an answer. In the third round, he fights against Pico (who is later revealed to have actually been Convict disguising as him), but before the battle begins, the Author's Comments states this:

"Much to his surprise, Pico has shown up in the samurai's land and is wreaking havoc. But Pico is a hero, why would he have razed Asshole's village?"

Considering Samurai's village was stated to have already been destroyed, we can only assume that the "land" part is referring to the garden itself. This implies that Samurai actually owns this entire place (which would be pretty expensive judging by everything within it, but that's besides the point).

And keeping the idea that he owns the garden in mind, this also implies something about the shrine on the left of the stage. While it wouldn't exactly be clear at first glance, if you pay attention to the picture above, you probably notice there are some sake bottles placed in front of an illustration of a red dragon of sorts. If the bottles placed there are from Samurai himself, then that may imply that Samurai worships some sort of dragon-like deity, as sometimes people do give up certain items to "please" whoever they're worshipping. What makes this all the more ironic is that Samurai killed a dragon-like god in his original game, so whether that dragon illustration is a picture of the same god is something I'm not too sure of.

Is S'Asshole tired?

This second theory proposes the idea that Samurai is actually exhausted (at least in the context of his redesign). In order to go into more detail about this theory, I'm going to put up Samurai's redesign that was made by MindChamber:

You're probably wondering "how does this imply anything about Samurai being tired in any way?" Well, look around his eyes, and you can clearly see eyebags of sorts underneath them. What makes this peculiar to me is that most of the characters MindChamber has designed (with a few exceptions) lack these eyebags, so I don't just think Samurai was given them just to make his design look more "realistic" in a sense.

Also, the idle animation itself kind of hints that he seems a bit tired; just look at how his face slightly sags when his position moves a bit downward. While it's mostly covered up by his arm, it still stands out to me mainly because the rest of his body seems to stand still compared to it.

And lastly, for this section, there's also the fact that Samurai's attacks in NG Rumble are very slow, even if he deals good damage. It's almost as if he's delaying his movement. While this could be a reference to how laggy his original game was, given everything I've said previously here, it could also be a product of how tired he is.

You're probably wondering what exactly would have made Samurai tired, to which that I provide a couple of guesses: stress (a samurai's job isn't exactly easy; whether this applies to his scrapped sequel or NG Rumble doesn't exactly matter, because both would have had him go through multiple enemies), trauma (while Newgrounds games don't take themselves seriously, the characters still go through a lot of shit; in Samurai's case, I don't think essentially being a killing machine wouldn't have an impact on his mental state), or possibly just lack of sleep (could be obvious).

Possible relation to Nene

If you're not familiar with me, then this theory might come out of nowhere. But basically to sum it up, I believe Samurai and Nene are related in some way. It might sound absurd at first, but it isn't exactly without its reasonings.

To start off, there's the fact that Samurai Asshole is actually a prequel to Pico's School. This is mainly because of the penilians (who are antagonists in the Pico series) appearing near the end of Samurai's game, both of the penilians are shown to be discussing about invasion plans and how they'll wait when the time is right (obviously referencing their failed attempt to invade the earth using Cassandra). With that in mind, it would be pretty ironic if one of the Pico characters happened to be related to Samurai, right? That's where Nene comes in, as well as these couple of other points that might hint at her being related to him in some capacity:

-The old icons of Nene that were used in the Newgrounds Art Portal back then gave her some dialogue that implies that Nene is possibly of Korean and/or Japanese descent (with her speaking both Korean and Japanese). Samurai, on the other hand, is specifically a Japanese samurai (obviously).

-Both characters also coincidentally use blades. Samurai uses a katana, while Nene is mostly depicted with using knives (even more notable given the fact that NG Rumble has her use them as a powerup).

-While this probably isn't strong "evidence", in NG Rumble, the Japanese garden (previously mentioned to be Samurai's stage) and Nene's store (which is meant to be Nene's stage) use the same theme in both the Story and Challenge modes. At no other stages in the game does this theme play (whereas the other stage themes are mostly reused for some other stages, mainly Piconjo's manor's theme), hinting that Nene and Samurai specifically share the same theme.

While the Pico characters are meant to be interpretive, I think it'd be pretty interesting if Samurai is related to Nene. However, the only possible way I could see the two being related is if Samurai is Nene's ancestor (as his game seems to take place in Ancient Japan, and his stage in NG Rumble doesn't exactly seem "modern" in any capacity).

So those were my theories. Did you think they were interesting (especially since I basically sat here for half an hour typing down all this stuff about some obscure character from a 1999 flash game)? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.