Mortal Kombat: A History of Secrets, Glitches, and Outright Crazy Rumours
The latest iteration of the Mortal Kombat series seems to have struck a chord with the gaming public, as critics and the gaming public agree that the image of a man with his name tattooed across his chest punching the head off of a scantily-clad woman is just what they’re into. (To see exactly what I just described in all it’s brutal glory please click here!)
Though I suppose this was to be expected, as the fighting game revival (started back in 2008 with the release of Street Fighter 4) is now going full steam ahead. With the success of the aforementioned Street Fighter series, Marvel Vs Capcom, and now Mortal Kombat, not to mention the ever-growing interest in Street Fight X Tekken, it’s become pretty clear that the world of gamers really, really enjoys punching people.
I’ve never been too into fighting games, since in the formative years of my nerdery those games were really only considered legitimate at the arcade, and I had neither the quarters nor the patience to allow oily-haired teenagers, with their angst, Marilyn Manson shirts, and terrifying skills, to beat my virtual ass time and again.
I’ve always had a special place in my heart for Mortal Kombat, though, and not just because of the fact that my mom forbid me from playing it. Rather, it was the weird mystique that seemed to hang around each iteration of the game, especially in its heyday of MK 1, 2, and 3. All these strange rumours you’d hear surrounding the game, of all the hidden characters that you could unlock if you beat the game without getting hit or blocking, or the crazy hidden fatalities that made the violence of the regular fatalities look like daytime TV.
Sub-Zero is a terrible, terrible chiropractor
While I suppose other fighting games have had this history of rumour-mongering (case in point, the Sheng Long April Fool’s joke(s) for Street Fighter 2), few developers relished and fed into this phenomenon like the creators of Mortal Kombat. No one else would take crazy, obviously fake rumours about hidden aspects of the game and decide to add them in to the sequel.
And that’s what the crux of this article is about, the crazy whisperings that came out of Mortal Kombat; specifically, the ones that were true, the one’s that most definitely were not true, and the ones that best of all became true.
The Various ___alities
Fatalities are in-arguably the foundation of the MK series. If it wasn’t for the ridiculous, hilarious, concerned-parents-up-in-arms level of violence that only Fatalities can provide, MK likely would not be the video game staple it is today. Because of this fame, though, it’s unsurprising that there have been endless rumours discussing the existence of hidden, even crazier finishing moves.
With the initial release of MK 2, there were rumours of the ability to turn your opponents into babies after winning a match. Though the concept seemed absolutely crazy, it turned out to be true. There was also a growing discussion about finishers called Animalities, where upon victory the winner would be able to turn into an animal and…well, do something animalish to their opponent. This rumour turned out to be false, and was likely started from a Fatality by Liu Kang which had him turning into a dragon.
BUT! Like all good things, it eventually became true, as Animalities were included for Mortal Kombat 3. Why? Because MK creators Ed Boon and John Tobias love screwing around with gamers!
Video Games: Where a ninja can turn into a polar bear to maul a four-armed woman he’s fighting in Hell
There were also rumours that individuals could cause fatalities using the arena itself, which was in a way both true and untrue. Some levels, such as the famous Pit stage found in multiple MK iterations, could have you uppercut your opponents off the stage and into the spikes below.
The rumour that you could feed your opponents to the living trees in MK 2’s forest stage, however, was false, despite people furiously believing it to be true, and trying every possible combination to make it occur. Best of all though is that, like many things in Mortal Kombat, it became true, as the latest Mortal Kombat has a revision of the old forest stage, and guess what? You can totally feed your opponent to the trees!
At its craziest, MK games had the famous Fatalities, Babalities, Animalities, Brutalities (where you’d pull off a crazy combo the would finish with your opponent explode), Friendships (where instead of brutal murder the winning character would do something stupid and friendly, like share a balloon), and even Hara-kiri (where the losing character would kill themselves instead of allowing their opponent to kill them). And though that may have been a bit too much, there were still rumours of other hidden kinds of finishers, including my favourite, sexalities.
I’ll leave that one to your imagination.
I’m Afraid Of Lizards…
Likely one of the most famous secrets of any video game, ever, is the inclusion of the character Reptile in the original Mortal Kombat. Though his existence wasn’t openly admitted to by developers initially, hints were displayed between fights as to how to fight the infamous lizard. And as people started discovering the method to fighting him, word of mouth began spreading, eventually leading to an MK fervor that led to the emptying of quarters from pockets across the continent.
This here would often be the reward you’d get for fighting Reptile
And how does one unlock the ability to fight Reptile? Oh, simply by beating an opponent, while on a certain stage, flawlessly, without blocking. Oh, and there had to be shadows across the moon in the stage’s background, an event which only occasionally occurred. Needless to say, not a lot of people had the chance to discover Reptile for themselves. But for those who did? It was like magic, and the Mortal Kombat series became forever ingrained into their minds.
“No, that’s not a secret character it’s an error messa..alright fine, you know what? It’s a new character now”
With the tradition begun by Reptile, however, many started believing that each new MK iteration would have other, also-crazy-to-discover hidden characters. Many a false rumour was created around the frenzy of people doing anything they could possibly think that would bring secret characters out of their hiding places. And the developers at MK would do anything in their power to insure that the fuel for this fire was continually fed.
Case in point? There was occasionally a glitch in MK 2 which had one of the characters, Mileena, showing up in red instead of purple, and MK fans lost their minds believing it to be a new, secret character. The reality of it simply being a palette glitch didn’t seem to matter to fans, who kept the dream of “Skarlett” alive. So much so that she’s now going to be a downloadable character for the newest Mortal Kombat, set to be released soon.
“It’s a secret character!” “How do you know?” “She’s red!”
The best story of all however involves the character Ermac, whose rumoured existence began with the original MK. In the arcade version of the game, there was an innocuous line at the bottom of the cabinet’s diagnostic screen which kept track of the number of error macros that happened during the game (if you don’t understand what that means don’t worry, I don’t really either), but to save space they used the shortened display term “ermac”.
Of course, to the fans of MK everything means in something, and so rumous exploded about the secret character “Ermac” hidden somewhere in the game. And, as MK fans are want to do, spent their quarters furiously trying to find him. The creators themselves even debunked the rumour, but it came back in full force when the magazine EGM reported as an April Fools Joke (they seem to have a history of doing terrible things to gamers around April Fools) that Ermac had been found.
Finally, as with all rumours in the Mortal Kombat universe, this one too eventually became true, as Ermac became a new playable character in MK 3. He’s now even something of a foundational character for the series, and can even be found in the latest release.
This is just the tip of the weird and expansive iceberg that is the history of Mortal Kombat secrets. I could’ve gone into more detail about a couple dozen other false rumours and glitches, but I think this article may already be far too long. I just hope you walk away from this article with the knowledge that the only people crazier than fighting gamers chasing rumours are game developers creating them.
