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The Marvel character,
Mephisto, first appeared Silver Surfer #3 (Dec. 1968) and was created by Stan
Lee and John Buscema. Mephisto is loosely based on Mephistopheles – a
character from the Faust legend. Prior to appearing as a secret character in Marvel
Super Heroes Vs Street Fighter, Mephisto was seen in Thanos'
stage and Blackheart's Marvel
Super Heroes ending. Although Mephisto is a separate character in the
comics, he appears as palette swap of Blackheart - featuring attacks that set
his opponents on fire. Mephisto later appears in Marvel Vs Capcom 3
ending artwork for Dante and Ghost
Rider.
Leftover sprites for Mephisto were discovered in Marvel Super Heroes vs.
Street Fighter ROMs, showing alternate effects and attacks that didn't
make it to the game. Judging from the sprites, there were more plans for the
character than Capcom had time to complete before the release of the game.
There also might have been plans to feature Mephisto within Blackheart's
moveset, with Blackheart summoning Mephisto to grab his opponent and breath
hellfire upon them.
Mephisto is a perennial villain in the Marvel Universe, and is responsible for
a number of evil acts, including capturing and holding the soul of Cynthia von
Doom – the mother of Doctor
Doom — until Doctor
Strange and Doom free her to ascend to heaven. He was jealous of the
worship of the fire demon Zarathos, so, posing as Satan, Mephisto creates the
Ghost Rider by bonding Zarathos to Johnny Blaze. In one story where he battled
Thor, he was shown to have
various historical villains in his realm, such as Adolf Hitler, Blackbeard,
and Attila the Hun.
Mephisto acted as
servant of the mad titan Thanos during the War of the Gems, seeking to attain
that power for himself. He is also responsible for capturing the souls of
heroes Mister Fantastic (whose intelligence was also stolen by Mephisto), the
Invisible Woman, and Franklin Richards due to a botched summoning by an
exorcist; furthermore, he creates his 'son' Blackheart, a demonic entity that
plagues many of Earth's heroes; and manipulates the sorcerer Master
Pandemonium into gathering the five scattered fragments of his soul that were
lost in an ill-fated encounter with the aforementioned Franklin.
When the Scarlet Witch
attempts to use magic to conceive children with her husband, the android
Vision, she unknowingly summons two of the soul fragments which are born as
her infant twins. The revelation of her children's origin, followed by their
loss when reabsorbed into Pandemonium, drives the Scarlet Witch insane.
Mephisto also tries to destroy the Avenger Hawkeye
when he enters Hell to try to save the soul of his deceased wife, Mockingbird.
Mephisto also heals
May Parker in exchange for changing the personal timelines of Peter Parker (Spider-Man)
and Mary Jane Watson so that they never married, claiming he did so only
because he hated their happiness (also adding that he has no interest in
taking Spider-Man's soul because such a deal results in him tormenting a soul
that is willing to accept the punishment because their sacrifice saved
another, a righteousness which disgusts him). He also, at Mary Jane's request,
erases knowledge of Peter's identity.
 
 
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Page Updated:
Sep. 21st, 2023
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Back in the day...
something about being a "secret" character in a fighting game, especially one who
is only unlockable after inputting a secret code, instantly made them mysterious
and cool. Extra cool points for debuting in the ARCADE version of a fighting game... which means plenty of live human
reactions were had, with unsuspecting players being educated and treated to
deeper knowledge of fighting game players who knew the code. >:}
Mephisto is a prime example, although, his potential was limited since he was
nothing more than a palette swap of Blackheart. The Mortal Kombat series
got away with "palette swap ninjas" for many years, so Capcom thought they could
slip this one in. It kinda works, because Blackheart's sprite in the game looked so damn
awesome (especially in red). Thus, this sprite-clone was almost forgivable (plus it was cool being able to use two
Blackhearts as your MSH VS SF team). It would've been nice if Capcom had
time to elaborate Mephisto and give him some unique moves, but they were clearly
on a mission to keep the Marvel VS series rolling at the time (releasing
a game each year)... so they clearly didn't have time to flesh out this
character. Aside from that, Mephisto himself is a badass Marvel character. (Btw,
this situation makes it tricky to rate this character.) :P
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