Benimaru Nikaido is a fighter from The King of Fighters series, best known for his electric-based combat style and that signature spiky hair that defies gravity during matches—a visual gag played up as extreme static electricity. His official nickname is The Shooting Star.
He's essentially the KOF take on Jean Pierre Polnareff from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, and the developers made this connection pretty explicit in his early appearances. His outfit in KOF '94 and '95 mirrors Polnareff's look, and even after they settled on the name Benimaru, the team kept referring to him as Polnareff internally. That taunt he does in KOF XI is also a direct nod to Polnareff's character from the manga.
The electric powers Benimaru and the rest of the Japan team wield came straight from Getter Robo. As for his voice acting, it apparently didn't quite match what his original designer had envisioned for the character, but it stuck around anyway.
Content compiled by AnimeList.moe from publicly available sources.
