Byron Taylor is still holding secrets within Street Fighter 5's story is he bluffing?

Byron Taylor isn't exactly near the top of characters that come to mind when you think of Street Fighter, but Guile's superior in the United States Air Force may be hiding something about the series just below the surface.

Last year, Capcom came out and directly told fans there's still undiscovered secrets in Street Fighter 5 surrounding Zeku, G and Taylor, and while we've already dug further into the first two characters, we may finally have some clues as to what is going on with the colonel.

To try and crack the code, we've gone back over Byron's appearances in SF5's cinematic story mode, individual character stories and his Shadaloo CRI profile to try and discover all that we can about this apparent man of mystery.

Starting out with A Shadow Falls, Taylor only appears in a total of like two scenes within the military command center though nothing that he says or does stands out as noteworthy.

So, we decided to take a closer look at his watch, dog tags and belt buckle to see if there were any hidden details players have missed these past five years.

As it turns out, Byron's watch does seem to feature a logo that looked suspiciously like Shadaloo's for a second, but on further inspection, it appears more likely it's just the logo for the USAF.

Street Fighter 5 Director Takayuki Nakayama indicates on the career military man's profile that "he's a pretty important guy!" and an enemy of Shadaloo, which doesn't really answer any questions... or does it?

Perhaps the most important piece of the puzzle actually comes via Kolin's character story in SF5 when she battles against Guile, who is searching around the waterfall for the MIA Charlie Nash.

After their fight concludes, Byron suddenly appears and convinces Guile to give up on his quest and that Nash is dead once and for all.

The irony here is Nash's tomb sat just behind said waterfall... but what if Taylor knew that and didn't want his subordinate to find out?

Following his revival, Kolin tells Nash "high ranking officers and comrades" betrayed him when he was gunned down by a military helicopter supposedly under M. Bison's orders.

The thing is, she spends the conversation speaking to Nash in only half truths, so what if there's more to the story now than the Alpha games originally intended?

Byron Taylor could have been the one to help set up Nash's demise from the start. Not for Shadaloo, but for the Secret Society.

Perhaps the goal of the mission wasn't to help Bison escape, but to rather put Nash into a state where he could be transformed into a tool for the Secret Society to help fulfill Gill's prophecy.

What's more, going back to Nakayama's original statement, the undiscovered secret doesn't just apply to Taylor, but also the United States Air Force.

If we're onto something here, it could point to a wider conspiracy involving the Air Force or maybe entire military being under the control of Gill.

It certainly wouldn't be the first time a piece of fiction has put a large part of the United States under the watchful eye of the Illuminati.

Street Fighter theory crafter Steven Mane also made the observation that Udon's comic series briefly portrayed a high ranking Air Force officer hailing Lord Gill, who has some resemblence to Taylor.

While Udon's Matt Moylan confirmed, however, this was written before they knew about Byron's character and these comics are technically noncanon to the games, it does show there's already been thought put into the Secret Society infiltrating the top brass of the military.

So why is any of this important if Byron's allegiances truly do lie elsewhere?

With Rose's story setting up a new time travel plot to save literally everything from destruction, altering Nash's ultimate fate could be in the cards for a few reasons.

As one of the strongest canonical fighters around, Charlie could prove to be a valuable asset to the hero team not only to go back into battle, but a way to change the present / future and put a damper on Gill's prophecy.

To pull that off, however, they would likely need to defeat those who would betray Nash — namely, Byron Taylor and maybe even the Air Force.

That pretty much covers all of what we've managed to unearth regarding Byron's potential secrets still lying within SF5 though there's one other detail that's fairly intriguing.

On Taylor's profile illustration, he appears to be blind in one eye that's been scarred and has no pupil.

However in A Shadow Falls, both of his pupils look to be fully intact and the same as one another despite still having the scar.

Does this also factor into Byron's secrets tied to his story or is it perhaps just a forgotten / changed detail about his design from earlier in Street Fighter 5's development?

We'll hopefully have the answers to these questions with the final character releases of SF5 or in Street Fighter 6... or Capcom could just drop this point entirely, and it'll remain a mystery never to be solved as they've done in the past.

Street Fighter 5 AE is available is our store!

Remember to check out our latest in-stock and purchasing at exgamerstore.com, follow us on Instagram @exgamerstore