Sarah Bryant was based on Sarah Connor from the 1991 film "Terminator 2: Judgement Day", one of the highest-grossing films made at the time, and was described by game designer Seiichi Ishii as being "an expansion" of Connor's image.

Dural was mainly designed to showoff of the game's polygonal technology and was named after the character Duke Duralumin, the villain from the Princess Knight manga.

Akira Yuki was modeled after real-life martial artist Masaaki Satake. His choice of fighting style, Bajiquan (Hakkyouken), was inspired by the main martial art from the Kenji manga. According to an interview with the series creator Seiichi Ishii, the game was heavily influenced by the manga, to the point that one of the game's preliminary titles was Virtua Fighter Hakkyouken.

The initial idea behind the game wasn't a fighting game. According to series creator Yu Suzuki, after finding ways to have human polygonal models in Virtua Racing, they looked into making a sports game. However, due to technical limitations they could not animate a full sports team and settled for a game that only required two characters onscreen.

Jacky Bryant is likely based on the design of Super Saiyan Trunks from Dragon Ball Z, with game designer Seiichi Ishii stating in an interview that Jacky was inspired by a ‘Super Saiyan’ from Dragon Ball.

The character Lau Chan was inspired by Mercenary Tao, also known as Tao Pai Pai, from the original Dragon Ball manga and anime. Lau was even once named Tao Chan, which is speculated by fans to be a combination of Tao Pai Pai and Jackie Chan. This connection also extends to Lau Chan’s daughter, who would be named Pai Chan. Pai Chan was also based on an ocha tea commercial actress.

The character Jeffry McWild was modeled after real life martial artist Willie Williams. At some point in development, Jeffry was planned to be named Willie but his name was later changed due to copyright concerns.

During early development there were going to be two playable character named Majido (later reintroduced as Siba in Fighters Megamix) and a military style character named Jeff. The code for the characters can still be found withim the game files.
An early version of protagonist Akira Yuki is available withim the game's code as well.