Well I've looked at the new shots on Gamespot and I noticed on the picture of "Ben" wacking Hotaru with the mace that you can make out the bottom half of a cobra on the back of his gi, the same cobra design you can see on the hooded guy in the large trailer recently released. This leads me to believe that the guy in the hood is indeed Ben and that "cobra" was an early code name for him that leaked out, or vice-versa. Why else would he have a cobra on the back of both his outfits?

This also would free up another new character slot, possibly for the rumored shokan or someone unknown.

Looking at Ben's outfits I think we can assume he is indeed a parody of other fighting game characters to some extent. His normal outfit looks strongly like Ken, and his hooded one bears such a strong resemlbence to Jin Kazama's Tekken 4 one its pratically copyright infringing, minus the mask, which might also be a poke at Scorpion If he's not a joke like SF's Dan this could lead to a very interesting character. It'd be very amusing to see how SF shoto specials and/or a mock-up of Jin's karate can hang with MK's finest. Much better then a lousy Johnny Cage wannabe like some have speculated.

Any thoughts?