Zed Blade character portraits (1994) 🔗

For the promotional flyer publisher SNK graced NMK's Zed Blade (aka Operation Ragnarok) with original art by Shinkiro, but for the in-game portraits of the characters they had to gey by using other means, namely scraping them from famous movie stills. Zed Blade's Uncle Beard matches up near perfectly with a somewhat rare photo from the production of 1978's Deer Hunter (except for the animal on his shoulder), while Corporal Swift Arnold is a very obvious stand-in for Maverick from Top Gun. (The actual photo used might be a more obscure variant than the one in the comparison, but even the partially visible patch on his uniform seems to read 'TOPGUN'.) Only Sergeant Ms. Charlotte is currently unidentified.
Credits: The Deer Hunter reference was identified by downchasm on Bluesky.