[6] The stage you fight him in was meant to reflect his personality, and at one point they considered it to be a giant mecha modeled after his appearance, before switching to an aircraft carrier.

[7][8] The character's popularity has continued even to his appearance in The King of Fighters XV, with artist Tomohiro Nakata surprised by how acclaimed the decision to include Rugal was.

[12] In The King of Fighters '94, when he is defeated the first time he will toss away most of his upper clothes, now wearing a black sleeveless undershirt with his suspenders dangling loose while, and fighting more seriously.

A more outlandish design, called "Rugal Infinity", would have featured his body merged with Geese and Krauser, appearing as a six armed naked man with the other two men's faces sticking out of the sides of his head, akin to depictions of the god Ashura.

[14] Dubbing him "Omega Rugal", they ultimately settled on an appearance similar to his King of Fighters '94 counterpart, but with his upper body having burst from his clothing, wild white hair, cybernetic prosthetics replacing his right hand and eye, and the Greek letter "Ω" tattooed on his back.

[15] Director Masanori Kuwasashi was in charge of the making of this version of the character, aiming to give loose ends with the Orochi demon explored in the series' first story.

[1] Omega Rugal later returned in King of Fighters '98, his design changed with the developers focusing on using his secondary 'serious' appearance in '94 as a base, while retaining the cybernetic red eye.

[16] This served as Omega Rugal's look from that game onwards with minimal modifications and additions, such as a costume variant adding a red longcoat and armored shoulderpads in XV as an unlockable reward for defeating him as a boss.

[33] When designing his gameplay, flagship director Toyohisa Tanabe stated that his fighting style was created to emphasize Rugal's strength as the series' first boss character.

However this feature was abandoned due to memory restraints, and his use of Kaiser Wave and Reppuken, moves belonging to Krauser and Geese respectively, is a remnant of this concept.

"[44] Gavin Jasper of Den of Geek praised Rugal's character as a villain, comparing him to Capcom's Street Fighter antagonists with "He’s what M. Bison wishes he could be," and "he proves that as great as Akuma is, his power is better wielded by a megalomaniac with the gift of style and swagger.

"[45] Going into more detail with the latter, he added that while other crossover fighting games such as Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite would routinely feature a "merged" villain from their respective franchises, Rugal's approach of stealing Akuma's techniques and how he utilized them with his own style set him apart.

Jasper noted that while Rugal returned for "dream match" games in the series, in his eyes solidifying himself as "THE villain of King of Fighters", he felt the character didn't wear out his welcome.

Instead he stated Rugal was defined as much by his weakness as his strengths, namely in regards to his deaths in the King of Fighters and Capcom vs. SNK titles due to absorbing too much power, describing it as "classic villainy".