We’ve been left out of the multiverse theory for too long

Maybe you’ve heard of the Tommy Westphall Universe — the idea that all of fictional television exists within a single, imagined multiverse. Or, for the film lovers out there, the Kevin Bacon Number, a measurement of the collaborative distance a person in the film industry has from working directly with actor Kevin Bacon. Perhaps you are an academic and are familiar with the Erdos Number, the numbered distance an article author has from prolific mathematician Paul Erdos. Well, I’m here to let you know that video games will be left out of multiverse fan theories no longer! Enter the Ryu Number, which plots how all video games are connected through the Ryu-niverse.

Something like this

That’s right, Ryu, Street Fighter’s ‘Wandering Warrior’, is the center of our gaming universe. Video game icons like Mario, Sonic, Solid Snake, Master Chief, and the Doom Marine are each legends in their own right. But only Ryu embodies the competitive drive and journeyman’s spirit. He constantly searches for the next battle, the next fighter, the next lesson. You never know where you might see him next. When one considers these qualities, who else but Ryu could be the ambassador of video games?

Now you might be incredulous about a single universe that connects franchises across Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft. Have no fear. With some rudimentary knowledge you can connect all the myriad worlds of gaming together.

The Rules

Pictured: An incomplete cast of characters Ryu has directly fought, credit to MLFoxwell

Like the Bacon number, the man himself is a 0. Everyone who competes against him directly is a Ryu Number 1, and everyone who competes against those characters is assigned a Number 2, and so on and so forth, with the lowest number taking priority. If a character has fought both Ryu himself and a Ryu Number 2, that character has a Ryu Number 1.

Meaning:

1. Ryu is Number 0.

2. Anyone who competes with a Number-holder receives that character’s number plus 1.

3. A character always has their lowest possible Ryu Number.

That’s all there is to it. The competition can be a video game, a movie, a comic, or even real life. To get you started let me show you some easy Ryu Numbers to remember. Some notable number 1s: Mario, Sonic, Captain America, Spider-Man, and Cloud. Further down, there are characters like the Star Wars cast members, Sanger Zonvolt from Super Robot Wars, Lu Bu of Three Kingdoms, and every single Disney Princess. Gears of War’s Marcus and Dom? There’s a path to them. Almost every fighting game in existence? No problem for Ryu. But, I don’t want to spoil your fun in finding the connections.

How about real people? LeBron James is 2. Barrack Obama is a 3. Ariana Grande is a 2 or 3 depending on how you read Brave Exvius.

A very incomplete Ryuniverse network