Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the Mortal Kombat games that I’ve played in my lifetime, but this is all really from a creative standpoint. When it comes to character creation, stories and development, Mortal Kombat really is kind of silly, in a stupid kind of way. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because it shows that they acknowledge errors and roll with the punches in a fashion that so many companies wouldn’t be willing to do. But throughout the years and lineage of the series, it’s gotten to a point where it’s all gone kind of far now.
All of this came upon because I happened to stumble upon the Mortal Kombat Wikia page, and I spent several hours of my day incapable of escaping the six degrees of Wikipedia whilst in this specialized Wiki. What started out as a little bit of a nostalgia trip ended up turning into this head-tilting, mouth-contorting, WTF-fest at seeing how some of the characters developed, the introduction of newer characters, and how the “canon” story progressed.
It’s almost like listening to a seven-year old trying to tell a story, and it’s evidently clear that they have no grasp of storytelling ability, and they often times just make shit up along the way, and instead of trying to fix any holes or gaps or cover their bases, they just pile bullshit on top of it. That really is what the Mortal Kombat “canon” seems like.
I’ll look beyond the obvious aspect of how many times Shao Kahn and Shang Tsung have been defeated or been killed at the conclusion of particular games, only to be resurrected or have their deaths/defeats flat out ignored, only to be the last boss, or the next conqueror of the Earth Realm, Out Realm, or whatever Realm is the one in danger of being taken over en route to the destruction of the world or whatever dominant efforts are in place. Or the fact that the series as a whole has made a very overused practice of introducing “new” characters that are simply just palette swaps of Scorpion/Sub-Zero, Kitana/Mileena, or the robots from MKIII. Their back stories and origins are always elaborate and over-the-top, but their gameplay is always just another re-hashing of another character. Mortal Kombat’s practice of this makes the Shotaklones of Street Fighter look like snowflakes.
Instead, there are just a few choice characters that caught my attention that I’d like to share some words over.
Noob Saibot. Originally, he was a hidden joke-caliber character introduced in Mortal Kombat II that was a play on words with the names “Boon” and “Tobias,” the two creators of Mortal Kombat, spelled backwards. To get to play against him, I think you had to win 50 matches in a row or something, easily done by simply pushing start on the P2 side, and beating up an immobile, defenseless bot 50 times. He was then, an all-black palette swap of Scorpion, and had all of his moves; he just moved faster and did more damage. He was easily defeatable if using Johnny Cage, where you hang back in the corner ducking, and whenever he approached you, split-punch him in the balls and uppercut him, over and over again. I don’t even remember what you got for defeating him, if anything at all, but for all intents and purposes, he was basically a glorified Easter Egg initially.
Fast-forward to later games, and now apparently Noob Saibot is a fairly permanent bastion of the Mortal Kombat canon. His backstory goes something like this:
Reincarnated in the darkest of all realms, the Netherrealm, Noob Saibot is the very incarnation of evil. Before becoming a wraith, he was once Sub-Zero, an assassin among the most powerful of Lin Kuei. As Sub-Zero’s name, clothes, and powers would suggest
Seriouosly? “The very incarnation of evil?” More like the very incarnation of a lame joke gone overboard, with such a cliché and hyperbolic backstory attached to it. Noob Saibot was a joke character, and for some reason, I’m guessing to inflate the number of playable characters for marketing reasons, was integrated into the canon storyline and given an elaborate backstory the equivalent of the seven-year old making shit up on the fly.
Ermac. Long story short, Ermac stood for “ERror” and “MACro,” obviously meaning for an errored macro, which was often times an errored Scorpion sprite. The result was a Scorpion sprite with a red palette instead of yellow, but the name would read “ERMAC,” subsequently. Ermac is a glitch, originally.
So naturally, the Mortal Kombat team needed to channel their inner seven-year olds and make him into reality:
Ermac is a Fusion of many souls destroyed in Outworld’s wars who came to be controlled by Emperor Shao Kahn and his Shadow Priests. Because of this, he refers to himself as “we,” “us,” and “our” instead of “I,” “me,” and “my“. Due to the sheer concentration of souls within Ermac, he possesses
Yeah, really. I couldn’t make this shit up even when I was seven-years old.
The funniest thing about these two Easter Eggs gone bad is the fact that despite their humble beginnings as mere palette swaps, the artistic development of their characters’ artwork as the series progressed. Granted, in the gameplay itself, they’re still closer to palette swaps of Scorpion/Sub-Zero, their conceptual artwork has mutated from one guy wearing the same costume with different colored accents to some truly unique designs.
Regardless, both these guys are the equivalent of Nintendo taking the guy that said “I AM ERROR.” In Zelda 2, and retroactively creating a backstory for him, and that he was one of Ganon’s telepathic slaves that assisted in the kidnapping of Zelda and the eight crystal maidens, and when he haphazardly touched the Triforce of Power, it punished his evil deeds with an elaborate curse that forced him to live in solitude and made him capable of saying nothing but saying his name, ERROR to anyone who asked, but deep in the recesses of his brain, he knows where the Triforce of Bullshit is.
Noob and Ermac were the two guys I really had in mind when I sat down and started writing this, but there are two other classic guys, I couldn’t help but wonder about, when thinking about them or their storylines.
Raiden, the good ‘ol God of Thunder. The bottom line is that in various iterations of the Raiden character, Raiden often forfeits his status of godliness to become mortal, so he can compete in Mortal Kombat in defense of the Earth. My question to this* aspect is WHY???
*I realize that in attempting to spell “this,” my fingers spelled out “shit,” and I just realized now that they have the same necessary letters.
Raiden is a fucking god, as in eternal, as in lives forever, as in it doesn’t matter if Earth or the various realms are conquered and destroyed, because he’d still live. Why he chooses to forfeit eternal life and fight like, and with plebeians is completely beyond me. And for what reason does he have to forfeit his god status? Because of the rules set by Shao Kahn or Shang Tsung dictate that no eternal, all-powerful gods are allowed to compete? Because what, it wouldn’t be fair? It wouldn’t be fair if some all-powerful gods wanted to stop some megalomaniac dictator(s) from trying to take over the world?
“Uh, sorry Raiden, if you want to stop our conquest for world domination, you’re going to have to turn in your eternal life, and then get in the back of the registration line over there.”
Raiden might be a fucking god, but he’s also probably the biggest fucking idiot in the Mortal Kombat universe. When the bad guys tell Raiden he can’t compete in their tournament because he’s a god, that’s where he’s supposed to go all godly on them and nuke them into oblivion. Tournament cancelled, the world is safe. Not turn in your god card and leave yourself vulnerable to Liu Kang bicycle kicks and Jax ripping your arms off.
Goro. Obviously, four-armed half-dragon/half-man creatures don’t exist, but I can’t help but wonder about the physiology of Goro when I look at original artwork pictures of him. There are muscles in his fictional chest that don’t seem right, but again, no such thing as Goros in reality. But like, clearly, Goro has to work out to maintain the fighter’s physique. I wonder when he does chest extensions or flies, if he uses a machine, if he has to do to separate sets for each pair of arms, or if in his Outworldly wealth if he has a special machine that affords to do flys for all four arms? Or maybe, he just lays down on the bench and does dumbbell flys, but uses like four 85s.
Regardless, only the top pair of arms are the ones that appear to be directly relative to the pectoral muscles. So when he does flys with the lower set of arms, are those kind of cheating to build up his obliques and abdomen? Or does it simply explain that weird layer of muscle right in between where the pectorals end and the abdomen begins?
Jesus, I can’t believe I just wrote so much about Mortal Kombat. But that just goes to show how stupid Mortal Kombat really is. Like I said, I have fun playing the games, but the characters and story that make up the Mortal Kombat universe really is kind of lame and silly. I sure as shit wouldn’t have this many words to write about Street Fighter or even King of Fighters, except for maybe shit involving like Dhalsim.
