I know what you’re thinking: Mortal Kombat? That hyper violent video game franchise that was originally developed by a small studio in Chicago because of course it was? Isn’t this site a glorified blog about Japanese entertainment?
Well, while that is an understandable mistake, it couldn’t be farther from the truth; this site is actually a complex and slightly malevolent experiment whose purpose is to see if I can replicate my thought patterns into other people’s consciousness, through a slow process of indoctrination.
So yeah, Mortal Kombat, this might surprise you, what with my propensity to never shut up about Kamen Rider/PreCure/Godzilla/Little Witch Academia, but while I am a man with a rather broad taste, Mortal Kombat has been my main hyper fixation since 1998.
I know this might be hard to imagine, what with how cool and dashing I sound, but I was that one 90’s kid who was obsessed with MK; from playing the games for hours and hours even though I suck at fighting games, to debating about the lore of the game on Internet forums for days to no end, MK had the biggest impact in my life growing up. It is a bit hard to explain, but everything about this particular franchise resonated with my tastes in ways nothing else has, and as a result it has shaped my identity as a person far more than I can put into words.
From the music to the visual style to the dark sense of humor, every aspect about this franchise just “clicked” with me, but the main reason why I have stuck with it for far longer than I probably should have is, and I know this is hard to believe, the story; while it is easy to write off the plot of a video game, let alone one about fighting, Mortal Kombat has one of the most expansive, deep, and complex storylines I have encountered in ANY medium.
I am talking about a story that revolves around dozens upon dozens of characters, a plot that spans actual millennia across multiple planes of existence, involves fantastical races, mystical creatures and entire civilizations with different, and often opposing, ideologies all involved in a timeless conflict to decide the fate of reality.
Mortal Kombat is The Lord of the Rings, but with Cyber Ninjas.
I could talk about the story and lore of MK for days (no, really), but today specifically I want to talk about the latest entry in the series, Mortal Kombat 11, and how its plot not only capped off 27 years of storytelling, but it did something I thought impossible; it added a whole new layer of complexity to the plot that completely altered my perception of the story, forever.
And it did so completely by accident.
Of Retroactive storytelling.
Fighting games are, generally speaking, the ultimate dichotomy; we are talking about a genre of games based on an activity whose narrative complexity reached its peak when Cain killed Abel, and yet most fighting games are known for having complex, convoluted plots that more often than not require alignment charts just to keep track of why everyone wants to punch everyone else.
Fighting games having unnecessarily complicated plots is more often the rule than the exception is what I am getting at; be it a tale of souls and swords eternally retold or Nintendo licensed characters fighting cosmic horrors, most games in the genre seem to believe that you can’t have a punching simulator until you have given every character three novellas worth of tragic backstory.
This begs the question, if all fighting games have needlessly convoluted stories, what exactly makes the story of Mortal Kombat, the 90’s poster boy for violence and self-indulgence, stand out among all of them?
The answer is actually far simpler than what the rest of this article will have you believe; when you get down to it, the plot MK is actually incredibly simple, but it is a story that has been developed and expanded upon with each entry, so while the original premise was as basic as you can get (punch the Evil Sorcerer!), the scope of the story has continually grown and the stakes have slowly but surely increased in each new game.
As to how this franchise has achieved this while also avoiding being bogged down by his own hubris as most fighting games do, it all comes down to a very simple concept: retroactive storytelling.
If you are a Mortal Kombat Scholar like myself, then you’re most certainly familiar with this term; one of the first things your learn when you start studying the lore of the series is the Iron-clad rule that, when it comes to the continuity of the story, the events described in the latest entry in the series are the ones that are considered canonical to the plot.
To better illustrate this, take, for example, one of the most popular character in the series and my actual main, Lord Raiden, God of Thunder and Protector of Earthrealm.
If you’re familiar with The Myth, then you know Raiden as the de facto leader of the forces of good, a benevolent God who always leads the charge against those who seek to destroy all that is good. In fact, his determination to protect Earthrealm (that’s where we live) at any cost has become a pivotal point of the story in recent years… which is kind of funny when you consider his original ending back in MK1, when his thirst for Kombat lead to the destruction of the Earth.
See, back in the original 1992 game he was still a God, but a lesser one at that. He had no rank nor mission nor character, he was just a God that took human form to participate in a tournament after being invited by Shang Tsung himself. He was a neutral deity at best, it was only in Mortal Kombat 2 that he was given a more heroic persona and it wasn’t until Mortal Kombat 3 that he acquired the role of Protector of Earthrealm that he is known for today.
This is retroactive storytelling: with each new game in the series, the story of the character was revised and rewritten in order to fit the newer and more ambitious narratives. It might sound like a practice only inconsistent and shortsighted writers would use, but it is actually fairly common in the world of written fiction. Heck, it is pretty much how these articles get made at all.
Again, this is a very common practice, you could point at any random multi part franchise, like say, Star Wars, and find that most of its best ideas are not the result of careful planning by the writer or director, but rather the discarding of old ideas and rewriting the story accordingly once they came up with an even better, more interesting idea.
What sets Mortal Kombat apart though, is how extensive the use of retroactive storytelling is; this being a fighting game, each character gets their own ending for beating the arcade mode, endings that often contradict each other or just make no sense whatsoever.
This is why most of the time the only way to know which endings made it into the canon was to wait until the next game came out, so while you could guess how the story of a particular game ended, you’d never be 100% certain until the next entry in the series.
Case in point, Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance.
The fifth entry and grand revival of the franchise after a series of flops had pushed it into a 5-year hiatus, MKDA went all out: with a completely revamped fighting system, loads of new characters and multiple game modes, this game was the biggest MK game up until that point. But most importantly, MKDA had one of the most extensive and detailed storylines in any fighting game.
This feat was achieved through multiple bios per character, interconnected ending sequences that told a bigger story, and the Konquest mode; an epic mission mode that was little more than a glorified tutorial, but that through its 218 missions told the story of MKDA in excruciating detail using the most advanced narrative tool 2002 could offer: plain text.
The fact that MKDA could have very well been the last Mortal Kombat game ever is probably one of the reasons why not only does it features the most detailed argument in the series to date, but also why it was the first MK to have a confirmed canonical ending; if you follow the storyline of the Konquest mode, you know exactly which endings from the arcade mode are canonical, so unlike the previous entries in the series, you do have a firm understanding of how the story actually ended.
Or at least that was the case until MKDA proved to be super successful and a sequel, Mortal Kombat Deception, was put in production, at which point the MK Team, the studio that has produced all of the mainline MK games, decided that instead of continuing the story of MKDA as it was, they were just going to scrap the ending were the forces of good prevailed and killed most of the heroes instead.
I admit, that was kind of a dick move, but that is part of what makes the story of this franchise so enthralling; it is simply not afraid to go into bold, new directions… even when that means having to literally re-write the past.
It’s about Time.
One of the biggest problems with modern videogames, besides the people who play them of course, is the sheer refusal to let a good story end: most popular franchises often keep pumping out sequel after sequel until their long running story line just straight up stops making sense.
Don’t misunderstand, I am a big fan of capitalism, so I do get the appeal of milking a franchise until all artistic merit is nothing more than a fleeting memory, but even I get tired when a story just keeps going for the sake of it, especially when I am morally obligated to give it my hard earned money.
That is one of the reasons why I find the seventh entry in the MK franchise, Mortal Kombat Armageddon, so noteworthy; it decided to do the unthinkable and actually finished the story of the series.
That’s right, in a move that surprised anyone who wasn’t following Midway Games Inc. business dealings, MK7 marked the end of the story line that we had been following since 1992. Naturally, that didn’t mark the end of the franchise, and after one final attempt to save the company with Mortal Kombat 8, most commonly known as Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe…
…Midway finally went under, and had no option but to sell all of their assets, including the rights for the MK franchise.
That’s not the end of the story, of course. Otherwise this would be a very short article.
While Midway’s mismanagement of the franchise was such that it almost deserves its own article, the MK brand was still fairly recognizable, so it wasn’t long before someone bought the rights to the game that basically led to the creation of the ESRB, and that someone was WB games, the gaming wing of the multimedia company who owns everything Disney doesn’t.
The franchise was saved, as was the economic future of everyone working at the MK Team, who were hired by WB and got rebranded as Netherealm Studios, and it didn’t take long for work to begin in the next chapter in the franchise. Armed with an actual budget and a reasonable development schedule, NRS were ready to rock the fighting game world.
Mortal Kombat 9, also known as just Mortal Kombat because nowadays everyone thinks they can do marketing, was the grand glorious revival of the practically dead franchise, and depending on who you ask (like say, me) it is also the best MK game ever made. Probably one of its most notable features was a revamped story mode, an improved version of the one introduced in MK8, that allowed you to experience the story of the game through breathtaking, fully rendered cinematics.
But wait, how could there be a story when MK7 had effectively marked an end to the long running series’ plot? Well, the answer to that is every hack writer’s favorite tool: time travel!
I know what you’re thinking, aren’t time travel plots just a cheap way to continue a story without having to go through the effort of resolving past conflicts and write something new?
Well, yes they are, but leave it to John Vogel himself, the head writer of the franchise since MK5, to actually do something clever with it: while the story, revolving around an older Raiden sending a message through time to his younger self in order to prevent Armageddon, is essentially a retelling of MK1, MK2 and MK3, Netherealm Studios used this chance to give answer to several unsolved mysteries that had plagued the minds of MK Theorists for years, such as the identity of the savior who gave Kabal his cybernetic implants in MK3.
Mind you, NRS did a lot more than just fill out 90’s plot holes; one of the coolest parts about this particular time travel setup is that Raiden’s attempts to change the future seem fruitless at first, but the smallest changes he makes off-hand end up having a catastrophic effects down the line; something as innocuous as having a conversation with the Lin Kuei Warrior Cyrax triggered a series of events that resulted in Sub-zero, the second most well-known character in the franchise, being turned into a Cyber Ninja, a plot point so controversial it ended up being undone by Shawn Kittelsen in the MKX comic book.
This is probably why most long running franchises, like say, Soulcalibur, end up doing time travel at some point; revisiting previous events in your story is not only a good way to pander all of the nostalgia, but it also lets you explore all the possibilities that could have been, even if you usually do end up making a mess in the process.
That is usually why most stories that involve time travel end up putting everything back together just the way it was or go nuclear and aim for a full clean slate, but that is yet another way in which the plot of MK9 defied expectations; the story of MK9 took many unexpected risks, and with the one exception they actually stuck to it and decided to continue the story using the new status quo, even when some of those changes didn’t sit quite well with most fans, and more importantly, me.
There are fates worse than retcons.
While I do love the way MK9 developed its storyline, there were a couple of changes to the story that I wasn’t exactly thrilled about, not because they were bad ideas, but because they contradicted everything I believe in.
One of the most well-known examples of this is the revised story of Kitana and Mileena; originally debuting in MK2, Kitana and Mileena were twin sisters that were raised together and trained to become assassins at the service of their father, the Emperor of Outworld and one of the main antagonists of the series, Shao Kahn.
At the end of the game though, it is revealed that Mileena was in reality Kitana’s clone, made with the intent purpose of keeping an eye on her since she was not, in fact, Shao Kahn’s daughter, but rather the only heiress of King Jerrod, Ruler of Edenia, one of the many realms Shao Kahn had conquered and fused with Outworld.
It was the typical Disney Princess stuff, but then came MK9 and changed all of this; in the new time line, Kitana was raised as Shao Kahn’s only daughter, and Mileena was only introduced during the events of MK2 in order to replace Kitana as his heir to the throne, because apparently Kitana wasn’t scantily clad enough.
Now let’s make something clear: this was a straight up retcon. They took the original story and changed it to better serve their needs, and to be fair they did play out this plot point in the story mode of MKX.
My main issue with this retcon is that it was just unnecessary; while it does make Kitana’s transition from quote on quote villain to hero more poignant, you could have achieved the same result without fundamentally altering the ethos of one of the most popular female characters in the franchise.
Regardless, this change to Kitana and Mileena’s backstory, while problematic, is ultimately inconsequential. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same about the changes to Sindel’s backstory.
One of the key plot points in the original story of MK3 was Sindel’s resurrection: originally the Queen of Edenia and wife to King Jerrod over 10,000 years ago, Sindel is Kitana’s long lost mother who killed herself after being forced by Shao Kahn to marry him so he could rightfully claim the throne of her realm. Naturally, this pissed Shao Kahn off, so he decided to imprison her soul for all eternity.
Now this is the part where I would normally do an incredibly in depth info dump to explain how the events leading to Sindel’s resurrection are fundamental to the backstory of the first three games, in fact, I did exactly that in an earlier draft of this, but it was getting over two pages long and I am trying to make this piece slightly shorter than a novel, so let’s just leave it at this:
In the original story, Sindel’s resurrection was fundamental for the invasion of Earthrealm in MK3, an event that was planned before the events of MK1 in case Shang Tsung failed to claim the Earth during the Mortal Kombat tournament once again, and it is actually an important part of the backstory of two of this franchise’s most popular characters, Scorpion and Sub-zero.
This might sound like the opinion of an old, cranky fanboy, mostly because that’s exactly what it is, but this bit of lore added a whole other dimension to the plot of the original trilogy, which is why I was stumped when they decided to retcon the whole thing:
In the new MK9 continuity, Evil Sorcerer with no hidden motives whatsoever Quan chi suggested to Shao Kahn the idea of invading Earhtrealm AFTER his defeat at the end of MK2, and he even offered to resurrect Sindel himself in order to get rid of some pesky ward she had put in place by killing herself in Earthrealm, preventing any plans of invasion.
This might seem like a harmless retcon at first, but it actually wreaks havoc upon the entire storyline; some of the most important events in the history of MK, such as the destruction of the Shirai Ryu and Hanzo Hasashi’s transformation into Scorpion, are a direct consequence of Shao Kahn’s plans of invasion. Take it away and you are left with a massive plot hole; we know the events of MK Mythologies still happened, they are directly referenced in both MK9 and MKX, we just don’t know how.
I stated before that retcons are part of what makes the story of MK in particular work so well, but there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it, and the original MK games are proof of this:
John Tobias, the original writer of the story from MK1 to MK4, intentionally left most details about the story and characters as vague as possible, not because he was lazy (probably), but because he understood that it was more interesting to leave certain details up in the air and let people connect the dots rather than over-explain things, an approach to storytelling the bore fruits for years; one of the best plot twists in the history of MK was the revelation that Noob Saibot, the mysterious shadow ninja who debuted on MK2 as a secret character, was in fact the reincarnation of the first Sub-zero who died in MK1 at the hands of Scorpion.
The best thing about this particular plot twist is that it was not planned at all; John Tobias consciously left the origins of Noob Saibot as a complete mystery, not because he wanted his identity to be a huge reveal, but because he wanted people to speculate about it, and this way of writing payed off much, much later when John Vogel came up with the idea of making the Sub-zero of MK1 and the mysterious character from MK2 one and the same in MK6.
This retcon worked so well because it expanded the narrative of previous games. Sindel’s retcon on the other hand, only works within the context of MK9 if you ignore the narrative of previous games.
Mind you, I am not saying that the new stories are bad, Nightwolf’s updated origin story in MK11 changed an old character for the better, but the entire point of a retcon is to improve or expand your overall narrative, and a lot of the changes introduced since MK9 seem to be there just to serve the plot of the current game even if it creates contradictions with the ones directly before it.
Maybe I am just salty because I am old and I play these games far more than anyone should, but the end result is an inconsistent narrative that it is very hard to reconcile with itself.
Or it would be if it weren’t for…
The Unified Kronika Hyper-Time Theory.
With the possible exception of my articles, all things must come to an end, and that is exactly what MK11 set out to do; to bring the story that began in MK9 to a close. Or at least that was the intention if Ed Boon is to be believed.
Mortal Kombat 9 technically introduced the idea of time travel into the series, so it is only fitting that this trilogy ended with more time travel; MK11 saw the formal introduction of Kronika, a Titan more powerful than the Elder Gods themselves and Keeper of the Timeline. She intends to correct history after Raiden’s attempts to play fast and loose with destiny basically screwed up everything for everyone.
Not the worst of ideas all things considered, but then we learn that her idea of “correcting” the timeline is to use the power of sheer nostalgia and human souls to retcon history so hard that Carlos Pesina will be deleted from existence, forever.
I will save you the actual details of the plot, but I will say that while the story of MK11 is not the most original, it has some genuinely great moments in it, which are a bit undercut by that fact that the plot does end with an universe reset, but there is one particular moment that stood out to me more than any other:
Near the climax of the story, Raiden, our God of trying not to make things worse, and Liu Kang, our champion of sheer self-denial, finally turn against each other because they’ve been carrying this plot since MK9 and it was about time to wrap it up. And not a moment too soon since their fight conveniently triggers a series of visions that show Raiden his past time line… and every other timeline before it.
In what was a genuinely shocking plot twist that I absolutely should have seen coming, it turns out that, in her eternal mission to maintain balance in the realms by way of constant conflict between the forces of good an evil, Kronika has rebooted history thousands of times; every time the mortal’s actions diverge from her vision, she resets the universe and changes history as she sees fit.
This means that there were not just two timelines as we assumed since MK9, but rather the events of all past games have repeated an untold number of times; there have been many tournaments, many invasions, many Shao Kahn’s, many Raiden’s and many Liu Kang’s.
Let me just state that while I do enjoy time travel set ups, I have never really been a fan of stories that use it as a way to introduce the idea of multiple realities into a series; once you reveal that your current story is just one of an infinite number of possibilities, it is really hard to care about the stakes of your plot. Think about it, how can the conflict of a story matter when you know that even if things go south and the heroes lose, there’s always an alternate reality where they don’t?
If you are familiar with comic books, you nerd, you probably think this is not such a big deal. I mean, DC has had so many alternate universes and timelines that they have to restart the whole thing every other week. But when you take this idea of multiple alternate timelines and you apply it to the unique way the story of MK has been written, a whole shebang of possibilities is open.
Consider this: what if every single retcon, inconsistency and random change in the history of these games is not just a result of poor planning and lazy writing, but a direct result of Kronika meddling with the timeline?
That ending of MK1 where Raiden destroyed the earth?
That could have very well have happened in a timeline until Kronika changed history to set things right.
Sindel’s three different backstories that are in direct conflict with each other?
Those could be three separate timelines that resulted from Kronika’s constant meddling.
Heck, that massive retcon at the end of MK5 could easily be explained by this: in the original timeline the heroes of Earthrealm triumphed against the Deadly Alliance of Quan Chi and Shang Tsung, but this event didn’t sit well with Kronika’s plans, so she altered history causing Sub-Zero’s apprentice, the female Lin Kuei Frost, to betray her Master.
Because of this, they were never able to join the other heroes, which lead to their downfall.
I really cannot overstate how this admittedly delusional theory of mine could change the entire landscape of the Mortal Kombat lore; I am talking about the possibility of not only there being two main timelines across 11 games, but multiples timelines for each and every game in the series.
Think about that possibility: MK2 might be the sequel to MK1, but that doesn’t mean that one game is a direct continuation of the other, but rather we are witnessing two separate events happening in two separate but similar timelines. Sounds convoluted, but not only would this account for every inconsistency between the games, it would also account for the existence of every single ending, even those considered non-canonical; we were merely looking at different outcomes from different timelines that could have happened before Kronika rebooted history.
I am almost certain that Shawn Kittelsen did not intend for this outcome, but this theory works so comprehensively well that it can even be used to explain the single greatest misstep in all of the MK history.
Of Gods and Monster.
It really says a lot about me as a fanboy that I spent almost an entire section of this article complaining about a single plot hole in MK9, and yet I have barely mentioned what is arguably the greatest mess in the history of this franchise: Mortal Kombat Deception.
Don’t take me wrong, Mortal Kombat Deception was not a bad game, not by a long shot, if anything it was an incredibly ambitious project considering the times and the usual constrains the MK Team had to deal with; this game not only featured a whole new fighting engine, but improved graphics, a full featured online mode, more characters than you can shake a stick at and more game modes than MKDA did, including my single favorite game mode in anything ever: the Konquest Mode.
Ah yes, Mortal Kombat Deception’s Konquest mode, a revamped version of the one introduced in MKDA that was less of a glorified mission mode and more of an open world RPG that had you embark on a 60-year quest to save the realms from a certain doom.
Back in 2004, which incidentally was roughly 60 years ago, this thing was AWESOME; not only did we get a 15 hour RPG on top of a fighting game, but this mode allowed us to explore the entire universe of MK across many decades in an epic storyline that intertwined with every previous entry in the franchise!
Or at least that was the idea.
The game does kind of deliver on that promise since you do get to explore the world of MK and its lore in a way that was not possible before, but the further you go into the story the more you realize how much of a mess it is; many events happen during the wrong time frame, the story skips years, even decades in time at random points, and the main character ages at completely inconsistent intervals.
While a bit disappointing, it wasn’t exactly shocking.
Midway was known for pushing for these games on really tight schedules, so they usually shipped with missing content or incomplete features because of a lack of time, and back in those days there really was no way to add them back post release without making a whole new edition of the game.
We fans had grown accustomed to that, but this case was different: there were missing features, yes, but the Konquest mode was more or less complete, it was the story that was a mess for no reason, almost as if it had been rewritten halfway through development… which is exactly what it happened.
I don’t know all the details myself, but the original plot of the Konquest mode revolved heavily around time travel, with our protagonist Shujinko being exposed to a time altering agent that wreaked havoc across his timeline.
This is the reason why the plot of this game mode is such a mess; the entire time travel aspect was dropped from the game during the last year of development, so the MK Team had to patch up the story as best as they could, leaving several gaps and inconsistencies. It was such a rushed job you can actually quantify it; if you use the in-game clock to time the events, you’ll realize that the “random” time skips and Shujinko’s spontaneous burst of aging match up perfectly.
Surprisingly, the biggest victim of this change was actually the franchise’s official mascot: Scorpion.
In his original plot for this game, Scorpion became a Champion of the Elder Gods after the events of MKDA, and was given the sole mission of stopping Shujinko from completing his quest. That part made it into the final game alright, he is in fact the final boss of the Konquest mode, but in the original story, after being defeated by Shujinko in the present, the Elder Gods sent him back in time so he could stop him before the time anomalies started.
This plot remained in the game until fairly late in its development, there were demo builds that included Scorpion’s Champion outfit as his alternate costume, but once the time travel aspect was dropped, all references to it were scrubbed from the game as best as possible; you still face the time traveling Scorpion after the first two levels, but now he is only referred to as “Monster” and his identity is never explained.
The game still has a great plot overall, but the Konquest mode, which was supposed to be the centerpiece of it, did leave you with many questions that never really got an answer… until you consider the ramifications of the Unified Kronika Hyper Time Theory™ that is.
Consider everything we have talked about until now, which I admit is no easy task, and ask yourself this: what if every single inconsistency encountered during the Konquest mode is a direct result of Kronika tampering with the timeline?
It makes sense when you (over) think about it; Kronika IS the Keeper of the Timeline, so when the Elder Gods decided to try and alter history it would have caught her attention, much like it did with Raiden in MK9. If the motivations of her character in MK11 are anything to go by, and they are literally all we have to go by, then it is perfectly reasonable to assume that she would try and alter the timeline to stop others from “corrupting” her work.
But what about the other inconsistencies with the story? That too has a simple explanation.
While Kronika does have the power to change history as she sees fit, Shujinko’s timeline had been corrupted already, and that could have prevented her from altering his timeline in particular. She might be a Titan, but just like the Elder Gods were unable to alter Shujinko’s timeline, her powers had a limit as well.
This would easily explain why the time irregularities only affected Shujinko, or the existence of Time Remnants such as Monster/Scorpion, who were directly tied to his timeline.
I admit my explanation is not perfect, and to be fair it is very unlikely that anyone at NRS expected this particular outcome for the story, but when you look at MK’s history, one that because of its very nature has been retroactively updated in pretty much every entry in the franchise, this particular theory is as close as you can get to a perfect explanation without going full meta.
This is but one example, but the more you dig into the lore the more the pieces fit. Hell, you could even use the Unified Kronika Hyper-Time Theory™ to explain Mortal Kombat Shaolin Monks, and do you have any idea how much of a mess that is?
Final thoughts.
Mortal Kombat 11 is, quite literally, the end of an era for this franchise.
I do admit it is a little weird that the final entry in this saga was written by someone who wasn’t a member of the MK Team/NRS since its inception, but Shawn Kittelsen proved himself worthy back when he wrote the MKX comic book, a story shock full of love for the MK Mythos, and while not all aspects of the story he made for MK11 sit well with me, it is undeniable that he found a satisfying end to the story while paving the way to create more narratives in the future.
Joking aside, I cannot wait to see where the story of my beloved franchise will go next. I do admit that I am not as passionate about the modern stories as I used to, the cinematic story modes are great but they do have some severe limitations, which is probably why I even came up with this theory; Mortal Kombat has a long history with a great legacy, and being able to look at its lore and characters from a new perspective always rekindles my love for the franchise.
After all, for old fans like me, piercing together the story was always half of the fun.
Fanboyism Extraordinaire 