Baiken is likely named from a mixture of cultures and references:
Although named using different kanji, she is likely named after Shishido Baiken, an kusarigama- wielding Edo period samurai who had a duel with legendary swordsman Miyamoto Musashi.
She may have also been named after the song "Sun and Steel" by Iron Maiden, which in itself is a tribute to Musashi. This is likely due to Arc System Works being known for its large history of referencing music in their works, namely the Guilty Gear series.
Baiken appears in Samurai Shodown (2019) as a DLC guest character, despite not being playable in Guilty Gear -Strive-, the 2021/2022 entry in the Guilty Gear series at the time of release. Her design in SNK's game is based on her appearance in Guilty Gear Xrd Rev 2 (a 2017 game).
Baiken would later appear in Guilty Gear -Strive- as DLC a few months after her appearance in Samurai Shodown (2019), and was released in January 2022.
In her second ending for Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus' story mode, Baiken was said to had cast away her gender after becoming a serial killer (being dubbed "Baiken the Killer") and being hunted down by the enforcement figure of the series, Ky Kiske.
However, Baiken's confrontation with Ky was a what-if scenario, with Baiken killing I-No prior within the same ending after giving into her bloodlust and losing her morality in the process[1]. With I-No making canonical appearances in laterinstallments in the series, as well as her starting position in Xrd -Revelator- contradicting her position in Accent Core, this would make the ending be one of the many noncanonical ones within the entry. Thus, it is currently unknown if Baiken had actually cast away her gender canonically, especially considering the difference in Baiken's personality between the ending and her later appearances in Guilty Gear.
Baiken and Gongsun Li are the only characters which are not cut in half when the function "Blood and Dismemberment" is active, most likely due to the specifications of their source material.
Although Samurai Shodown (2019) is Baiken's first appearance in an SNK fighting game, her first appearance in any SNK media was as a guest character in The King of Fighters '98 Ultimate Match Online, a mobile game authorized by SNK.
She also appears in another authorized SNK mobile, The King of Fighters All Star, during a collaboration with Guilty Gear Xrd Rev 2.
