Charade

The following is a comprehensive list of characters from the Soulcalibur series of video games, beginning with Soul Edge (Soul Blade in the PlayStation version) in 1995.

Soulcalibur is a weapon-based fighting game franchise developed by Namco Bandai's Project Soul division. Set in the period of late 16th to early 17th century, the plot of the games revolve around Soul Edge, a cursed sword able to possess its wielder and devour souls. Its spirit is called Inferno, and his avatar/host is called Nightmare. Soul Calibur, a holy sword and Soul Edge's antithesis, also has a spirit called Elysium.

When creating characters for the series, they started with the weapon first, aiming to choose one that would feel unique amongst the cast. The character concepts themselves are then built around the chosen weapon, with their movement, animations and personality designed to fit it. Afterwards the character is defined down to their weight, height, age, and gender, and then developed by the concept artists. Afterwards a 3D model team is assigned to work on that character exclusively, with little overlap between the individual teams. Motion capture is then utilized for character movement and animation, though in select cases the design team will animate the character by hand instead. During the phase the designers will work with the story creators, refining the character's role in the plot as necessary. Some characters have been an exception to this process, such as Necrid, a character co-produced with Todd McFarlane that appears in Soulcalibur II.

Starting with Soulcalibur II, guest characters from other franchises or companies were introduced for different home ports of the game, with The Legend of Zelda s Link appearing for the GameCube version, comic book character Spawn for the Xbox, and Tekken s Heihachi Mishima for the PlayStation 2. Despite rumors of Devil May Cry s Dante's inclusion in Soulcalibur III, developers confirmed no plans for the inclusion of guest characters for the title, with series producer Hiroaki Yotoriyama stating "It's my policy to never do the same thing twice." However, under new producer Katsutoshi Sasaki the concept was revisited in later titles in the series, with Tales of Symphonia s Lloyd Irving appearing in Soulcalibur Legends, Star Wars characters The Apprentice, Yoda and Darth Vader appearing in Soulcalibur IV, with the latter two exclusively to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions respectively until later released as downloadable content, God of War s Kratos for Soulcalibur: Broken Destiny, and Ezio Auditore da Firenze from the Assassin's Creed franchise for Soulcalibur V. Devil Jin from Tekken was also added to Soulcalibur V as a non-playable character and his moveset can only be accessed by creating a character that uses his style of fighting. Soulcalibur VI added Geralt of Rivia from The Witcher, 2B from Nier: Automata and Haohmaru from Samurai Shodown as guest characters.