A punk representing the United Kingdom in the first Street Fighter game, Birdie originally was depicted with light skin and a simplistic design.

Artist Naoto "Bengus" Kuroshima handled the character's redesign, seeking advice from colleagues on how to proceed and figure out what would and wouldn't work.

When asked about this, series producer at the time Yoshinori Ono jokingly compared it to his own weight gain from working at Capcom, and felt the lifestyle Birdie was living during the events of the game helped justify it.

[6] Nakayama also felt that Birdie could fit the "tsukkomi" role in the game's storyline better than regular characters, and included him more actively in its presentation.

[4][citation needed] Birdie has been cited in particular as an example of how some perceive the Street Fighter series' poor handling of race, with Wired writer De'Angelo Epps calling him "the epitome of a Black caricature.

"[17] The paper "Contours of virtual enfreakment in fighting game characters", in the journal Technological Forecasting and Social Change, noted that while Birdie was an egregious example of negative portrayal, they questioned if his origin from the United Kingdom represented hesitance on the developers to not portray "too negative a stereotype for any specific group" by avoiding a "non-token" country.

[18] His depiction in Street Fighter V has received mixed reception, with Kotaku staff calling his redesign "insulting", while Eurogamer writer Wesley Yin-Poole found his reimagining "stunningly successful" for a character most players forgot.

He contrasted visual depiction in Alpha, which he described as "large, yet lean and muscular" and "mysterious, calculative, and intelligent" with what he felt was "yet another obese, comedy relief oaf."

[21] Comic Book Resources writer Sage Ashford felt that while Birdie's design in Street Fighter Alpha was already unusual, citing his height and punk style, they found the changes made in Street Fighter V made him a negative stereotype of larger people, criticizing the fact that his only goal is unlimited food.

[23] Meanwhile, though Gavin Jasper of Den of Geek acknowledged him as the introduction of the "big brute" archetype in the series, he praised Birdie's redesign in the Alpha games and felt he was a significantly better character than Balrog due to his ambition of taking over Shadaloo and called him an "evil version of Jeffrey Lebowski."