In the Street Fighter V Climax Arts + Zero to 6 book, the game's director Nakayuki Nakayama confirmed that Decapre was originally meant to be in the base roster instead of Cammy. This was changed after the developers realized the latter was more essential to the game's storyline.

Decapre is not playable in the final game, instead being an NPC in the A Shadow Falls story mode.

Street Fighter series director Takayuki Nakayama revealed some concept designs by Bengus meant to represent each of divine beasts in Japanese mythology. These designs depict Byakko (the white tiger), Suzaku (the vermillion bird), Genbu (the black tortoise), Seiryu (the azure dragon), and the less often seen Koryu (the yellow dragon). These designs were meant to be used for mascots of the annual Special RAGE Cup events, which were Street Fighter tournaments held in Japan. The winner would recieve an special costume made for them.

As the RAGE Cup event only lasted for three years (2016-2018), only three of the beasts were present. It is unknown what the final concept of the blue and yellow dragons might have looked like.

When Rashid was unveiled as a playable character in Street Fighter V, his specific nationality was unknown, with players only knowing that he was Middle Eastern. However, in 2022 when the entire playable base game roster and first wave of DLC of Street Fighter 6 was leaked, it revealed a more specific country he was from, with Rashid confirmed as being Saudi Arabian.

The character R. Mika will give herself a buttslap right after activating her Critical Art. In early footage of the game, the camera focused on R. Mika's butt while this happened, but this was later changed so that the camera is repositioned higher up to cut out the view. Additionally, R. Mika and her partner no longer split the opponent's legs.

In a December 2015 article by DualShockers, Producer Yoshinori Ono stated this change was made because they wanted to avoid making players uncomfortable and that the choice was not influenced by external factors. However, in an interview featured in the Best of III webshow, Capcom's Director of Brand Marketing and Esports Matt Dahlgren stated that this change was done due to issues regarding the game's rating, as they wanted to appeal to a very wide audience and keep Street Fighter "a family-friendly franchise".

In a Gamespot article published in January 2016, Ono reiterated that the change was made to avoid making people uncomfortable. However, this time he said that the team took in consideration the criticism that certain characters were too sexualized, contradicting his earlier statement that this change was done without external influence.