A popular and memorable Street Fighter character, Blanka has been referenced many times in pop culture ever since his introduction in Street Fighter II.
Street Fighter series
Capcom games
- In the arcade game Cadillacs and Dinosaurs (1992) there is a mutant enemy called 'Bludge' whose appearance is very similar to Blanka.
- Blanka has a cameo in the downloadable title Flock.
- King Rasta Mon was believed to be a prototype image for Blanka.
Other video games
- The ending of Eyedol in Killer Instinct (the first game in Rare's series of fighting games) is a parody of Blanka's ending in Street Fighter II, where Eyedol finds his mother but he kills her (this is more clear in the Arcade version of Killer Instinct than the SNES version).[1]
- Ricardo "Rico" Banderas from Square's 1998 PlayStation RPG Xenogears bears a striking resemblance to Blanka. The director even jokes about this in the Xenogears Perfect Works ~The Real Thing~ development book, stating that, "If he looks familiar from other games, that's just in your mind."
- Blanka appears as a Spirit in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
Real-life Events
- When Rio de Janeiro was declared the site of the 2016 Olympic Games, pictures of Blanka drawn as the unofficial Olympic mascot began to spread.
Comics and Manga
Television and Animations
- He appears in Season 5, Episode 18 of the stop-motion animated series Robot Chicken, charging his cell phone via his Electric Thunder attack.
- He appears in Season 1, episode 9 of the magazine-based animated series MAD, in the segment "MAD's Guide to Video Game Cheats", and he is seen fighting M. Bison in Street Fighter IV. The cheat shown in the scene can only be performed with Blanka as the player-character, and with the player pressing the following buttons " Right, X, X, Left, hold L and R", which lets Blanka force his opponent (M. Bison, in this case) to watch his parents' wedding video, and M. Bison, driven completely insane by the video, defeats himself.
- In the fourteenth episode of Food Wars, the post-episode card features parodies of the some characters dressed as Street Fighter characters. The one of the main characters, Erina Nakari, is dressed as Blanka.
Music
- Blanka is referenced in the lyrics to Red Velvet's single Peek-A-Boo: "Call me, let’s go play all night, restart a game! Go forward, roll it Blanka!"[2]
Internet
- Blanka was a combatant on the 24th episode of Screwattack's "Death Battle" where he fought Pikachu, the mascot of Nintendo's Pokemon series. Blanka emerges as the victor, and the fight ends with him biting off Pikachu's head, putting his body in a blender, and drinking it. The explaination for him being the winner is mainly because he preys on electrical creatures which his opponent technically is and Pikachu usually relies on his trainer, Ash, to guide him in battle.
- He also had a cameo in the 67th episode of the above series where he, along with Sean, and Sakura, was a student at Ken Masters' dojo where he watched the fight between Ken and Dan, and then the fight between him and Terry Bogard before he decided to head for the hills when the dojo started to fall apart due to the intense fight.