As one of Mortal Kombat 's original characters, Johnny Cage has a deep and rich history in the franchise as one of the defenders of Earthrealm that has created a legacy which is carried on by his daughter Cassie more on her later. The movie star martial artist was initially based on Jean-Claude Van Damme's character in Bloodsport , though he has since evolved on his own and developed one of the most dynamic personalities in the Mortal Kombat franchise that has maintained the popularity of Johnny Cage for decades.
The first Mortal Kombat arcade game included an interesting "ERMACS" glitch that seemingly referenced an unknown character, much like a similar reveal teased the appearance of the secret character Reptile. After years of teases and speculation, Ermac was finally introduced in Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 as a red-palette swap for Scorpion, though the character evolved his own look and backstory as the collected souls that were killed during the wars of Outworld, which gave him incredibly powerful telekinetic and teleportation abilities.
Bi-Han appeared as Sub-Zero in the very first Mortal Kombat as a powerful assassin and leader of the Lin Kuei clan before he was killed by Scorpion after the first game's tournament, with his younger brother Kuai Liang taking over as the second Sub-Zero. Bi-Han was reincarnated by the sorcerer Quan Chi and returned in Mortal Kombat II as Noob Saibot a reversed homage of game creators Ed Boon and John Tobias , a black-clad ninja with devastating Fatalities and Brutalities that demonstrate the evil nature of his new form.
This 10,year-old princess hails from Edenia. Her age is unencumbered by her looks, which reflect that of a young woman with a strong physique. Kitana is the stepdaughter of Shao Kahn , whom she eventually betrays. Alongside her romantic partner, Liu Kang, she became one of the leaders of the Netherrealm.
She sometimes relies on her Steel Fans during battle to unarm her opponent or to help her levitate. Her main skills, however, fall under hand-to-hand combat. In his original timeline, Raiden was a mortal who resided in the Earthrealm. He typically wore white robes with a blue vest and a straw hat. His abilities have always consisted of electrical bolts and he is able to move as quickly as lightning. He can also teleport, shock, and can sometimes summon a lightning rod. He eventually turns into Dark Raiden, where his glowing white eyes transform to red.
In this form, he is heavily armored, though his signature straw hat is intact. It's also been fun watching the community embrace him so lovingly given, again, how much of a non-character he was at the beginning. MK has had a lot of sub-bosses, but none have left the lasting impression that Goro has in terms of intimidation and impact.
Cassie is the breakout star of the four Kombat Kids by a mile and may arguably be the poster girl of the new trilogy. Kano serves as a fantastic scumbag villain and his effective or cheap Kano ball attacks have guaranteed him a place towards the top of our rotation for decades and counting.
Also of note: cool laser eye. The original secret fighter once dominated schoolyard rumors and has since become a series staple. Though his appeal has diminished somewhat over the years maybe we just prefer him as a human-ish guy with lizard powers instead of a full-on giant lizard , his acid attacks and exploitative invisibility power will never lose their luster.
Jax would have been placed high for two reasons alone: He has metal arms and can grow into a giant and step on people which has still never been explained. His characterization in recent games as a caring father traumatized by years of fighting in this crazy universe made us get behind him even more. Not even a bad Ronda Rousey voice over can completely sour us on this no-nonsense soldier. Kung Lao has always been an incredibly entertaining fighter to use, and we love how his inflated ego compliments the selfless attitude of his BFF, Liu Kang.
Nothing is more satisfying than literally beating the youth out of this creep. From the moment he graced the art of the first arcade cabinet, Raiden has been one of the most recognizable characters in the franchise, appearing in nearly every game. How could he not? Besides playing a pivotal role to the lore, his offense rocks.
Okay, here's your chance to completely eviscerate our super fun list and tell us what the "correct" order is in the comments!
And if you still have an appetite for seeing Mortal Kombat lists, check out our ranking of every game in the series. Join Sign In. Post Tweet Email. Follow Us. Share Facebook Post. Twitter Tweet. Email Email. Comment Comment. Marcus Stewart.
Marcus is an avid gamer, giant wrestling nerd, and a connoisseur of 90's cartoons and obscure childhood references. The cat's out of the bagel now! Email Twitter. Mavado fell down the totem pole when they stopped caring about the Red Dragon in Deception temporarily killing Mavado off in the process and then decided to retcon him into second-in-command to Daegon by the time Armageddon rolled around.
Shinnok should have been awesome. Then he showed up in Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero , which made him look like a jester as played by a guidance counselor. He was just a lazy Shang Tsung. Shinnok ends up jumping up the list a bit because of his depiction in Mortal Kombat X. Still looking like kind of a weenie at times, he at least has the terrifying Corrupted Shinnok final form to fall back on. Sonya is the weakest of the original seven characters.
The first lady of Mortal Kombat fits right in the line of awkward outsiders and unfazed adventurers. Then again, a lot of that is forgiven for that scene where she goes to town on Quan Chi and crushes his nuts.
Guys, Ronda Rousey is so bad. She weighs down every single Sonya scene with her voice acting and it gives me no choice but to bring Sonya down several notches. No jury would convict me. SNK 2. The duo is a bit paper-thin at times, but at least their symbiotic species is the most original new race the series has introduced in years. Cetrion, by design, is more nightmarish than her brother Shinnok. Shinnok is pretty straightforward as a villain, especially when later games outright describe him as being the God of Evil or God of Darkness or whatever he is.
In Mortal Kombat 11 , she defies her own position by aiding her mother Kronika and trying to bring forth a reality of endless warfare. Her ending has her break away from that behavior only to rewrite reality as a hellish existence for the sake of making peace and love seem that much better in comparison. People want to believe in a God that is loving and compassionate and Cetrion dresses the part but acts like a total sociopath.
Then he made his first official appearance by clowning the combined might of Raiden, Shang Tsung, and Quan Chi without breaking a sweat. He would never be nearly as cool as Shao Kahn his former advisor, who killed him with treachery years ago , but he was the right villain for what the series needed at the time.
He works best as an accessory to Scorpion, finally giving him some semblance of family and helping to give him closure. Jax was cool as hell in his first couple of appearances, playing the super-strong army dude who would charismatically break your face. Jax gathered more dimension in the reboot, mainly due to his tragic death, time as an undead ghoul, and the return from it.
In Mortal Kombat Unchained , they played it up that putting Jax in that kind of situation would turn him into a juggernaut made out of raw hatred. Mortal Kombat X and Mortal Kombat 11 went further and showcased the long-lasting mental effects of having to go through that ordeal. You know what else rules? Putting out cigars on your metal hand. Also, being reskinned as Carl Weathers in Predator.
Sareena showed up in Mythologies as a demon underling of Quan Chi. She is essentially the anti-Scorpion in that Sub-Zero chose not to kill her when given the chance, and it ended up having a positive outcome.
She aided him against Quan Chi and then asked him to help her leave the Netherrealm. Shinnok seemingly killed her, but as explained in the Deadly Alliance Game Boy Advance port Mortal Kombat: Tournament Edition , she was able to reform and escape from the realm.
From there, she was an ally of the second Sub-Zero and tried to be a better person, despite her demonic origins. He wants to stop Onaga from ruling the realms, but as a means to resurrect Shao Kahn because he liked his style as a conqueror. Sindel takes a respectable leap up the ranks because holy shit that scene. In the games that follow, he starts devolving and no longer becomes much more than a throwaway villain.
Setting him up as the host for Onaga in Deadly Alliance was an inspired twist, though, and I love his bandaged ninja redesign from Shaolin Monks. At first, Sektor and Cyrax were interchangeable outside of armor color and what kind of explosive device they liked more. As the games went further with Mortal Kombat Gold and Tournament Edition , we started to see some real contrast.
Cyrax was an honorable warrior, but Sektor was a straight-up jerk. While Cyrax, Smoke, and Sub-Zero were reluctant and horrified, Sektor relished being a robotic killing machine, eventually even starting his own Lin Kuei offshoot to force more ninjas into becoming robots in the hopes of world domination. The true evil mastermind of the Mortal Kombat universe , Quan Chi is always three steps ahead of everyone else, while rarely ever taking the center stage.
The guy is just completely hateable, making it no surprise that NetherRealm Studios decided to include him in the reboot despite not actually appearing in the original trilogy. She went from being self-centered to greedy and power-hungry to completely insane, soon driven only by her desire to kill Sub-Zero. Not because she was outright evil, but because her own faults led her to mental illness. The new, altered timeline shows that Sub-Zero and Scorpion have been able to make their peace, but not only does Frost oppose it, but it breaks her to the point that she literally loses her humanity and becomes a freaky cyborg under her own will.
In the early days of arcade fighting games, there was this unwritten quota that your game needed to have some kind of token freak character. Street Fighter had Blanka. Samurai Shodown had Gen-An. Mortal Kombat had Baraka. When the series got more outlandish, his novelty started to fade, outside of the always-fun Wolverine arm blades gimmick.
Mortal Kombat 11 gave him a real shot in the arm. I like his zest for flag-waving in the name of his clan. The soul-eating shape-shifter was such a great villain, able to attack you with the repertoire of almost everyone in the game. His appearances in the first two games were the best, but it went downhill when he suddenly became thong-wearing Alice Cooper in Mortal Kombat 3. That was a strange phase.
Kronika breaks that idea further by being so overly broken that the story mode has to come up with a very specific scenario to defeat her. Although more powerful than the other boss characters in the series, Kronika is scary not because of her pure might, but because of her affronting divinity.
Like I mentioned with her daughter, Kronika is a perversion of God as a concept. She manipulated Shang Tsung into his soul-stealing ways, birthed Shinnok, and wants to keep the likes of Shao Kahn and Kano in power. Kronika is a great major villain in Mortal Kombat and her loss cutscene in arcade mode is just the icing on the cake. His magic razor hat and endless sense of smug will always help him stand out, but not enough to get a leg up over Liu Kang.
Stryker was an unintentional joke in Mortal Kombat 3 , looking less like a guy who would try and save the world and more like Randal from Clerks. He gradually became better over time, mostly due to being voiced by Ron Perlman on the Defenders of the Realm cartoon and that hilarious moment in the Armageddon intro where he sucker punched Mileena and cheesed it.
He really became something worth caring about in the reboot, where he came off as a likeable, disgruntled, smart-ass who seemed to have a better handle on his unorthodox cop weapons.
His own win pose was him throwing a grenade onto his opponent and glaring at the player while ignoring the splatter. Stryker suddenly became the man. I should also mention that his ending in Mortal Kombat 9 is the funniest thing. Poor Johnny. At worst, Geras is a generic henchman with a unique spin.
At best, Geras is a tragic being whose only salvation can come from rising above his own mission. That whole ability to alter the game clock one way or another is such a wonderful, brilliant asshole move. When they introduced the female ninjas in Mortal Kombat II , Kitana became one of the breakout stars of the series , easily having more meat on her character than Sonya ever did. He could have snuffed her out as a child and probably should have.
Instead, he chose to raise her as his prized assassin and make an evil clone out of her, never caring enough about how that could blow up in his face.
And it totally did! Her screams can paralyze and discombobulate, and by the time her target is coming to their senses, it's often too late for the opponent to regain momentum.
She is sassy and quick-witted like her Dad, but also skilled and serious when the time calls for it, much like her Mom. Cassie fights for Earthrealm using a combination of her Dad's Martial Arts skills, Her Mom's firearm military training, and her remote control battle drone. Cassie has also inherited her father's powerful green energy-infused attacks, leaving her with a stacked arsenal-like ability set in MK Jax is an icon of Mortal Kombat and a staple to the franchise.
He is a high-ranking soldier who had a hand in training Sonya Blade. Due to losing his human arms in the first Mortal Kombat tournament, Jax was fitted with cybernetic ones that grant him incredible strength. Using a combination of grappling, ground pounds, heating up his cybernetic arms, and throwing bone-crushing punches, Jax is a threatening opponent who can control a fight very strategically in MK11 , while also looking cool as ever.
The beard is a nice touch. Shao Kahn is just scary. The brutally violent tyrant of Outworld returns to the fray as an unlockable character in MK Shao Kahn has killed many fighters in Mortal Kombat lore, and he is feared by many within the franchise. Wielding a massive hammer and dealing immense amounts of damage to foe when attacking, Shao Kahn can obliterate opponents and is a nightmare in the hands of the right player.
He is a more than worthy opponent for nearly every character, both in lore and in gameplay. Raiden is the iconic god of Thunder and the mentor of the Mortal Komba t series main protagonist Liu Kang.
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