Leon S. Kennedy
Dante debuted in "Devil May Cry", a game originally intended as part of Capcom's "Resident Evil" franchise. Series creator Hideki Kamiya rewrote the story, taking it from Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy". He was originally going to be a Western policeman. His early name, Tony Redgrave, served as a reference to one of the characters from "Resident Evil", Chris Redfield. According to Kamiya, the title character of Buichi Terasawa's "Cobra" manga series was the basis of Dante's personality. To give the character's "stylishness" he dressed him in a long coat to make him "showy" and made him a non-smoker; Kamiya saw that as "more cool". Dante wears red clothing—the traditional Japanese color for a heroic figure—in contrast to Leon S. Kennedy, a character Kamiya created for "Resident Evil 2", who wears blue clothes.