User blog comment:ChishioKunrin/Q&A questions for the December 19th livestream/@comment-25086632-20151219173705/@comment-410526-20151219183715

These are just quick notes. I should definitely give context.

It was the character designer Erin Winn who mentioned that hood guy is based on Aladdin, and only as a sort of design jumping-off point for his general look and outfit. These characters don't even have names and are just glorified props, I doubt they have an entire character allusion planned for them.