Irregular cult-favourite Kabal is about to feature in the Mortal Kombat movie, and according to series co-creator John Tobias -- he's an underrated character ready to be explored. Tobias revealed more about Kabal's backstory, including his original role in Mortal Kombat: Special Forces. Read on for details:

Originally launched in conjunction with MKX; Mortal Kombat Mobile has expanded into a unique collection of warriors from the games' arcade history right through to Mortal Kombat 11! The free-to-play app is now asking fans to weigh-in on some of the characters that could appear in the lineup for 2021! Read on for full survey details:

It's always special when John Tobias shares original artwork from his personal archive. The Mortal Kombat co-creator recently treated fans to a sketch of Jax and Sonya - the original Special Forces! Check it out:

If you don't know the name - you know the face. Former Midway Games developer Josh Tsui gave the second Sub-Zero identity in one of the series' earliest bombshell twists - his Mortal Kombat II arcade ending. Tsui later provided the basis for Mortal Kombat 4 Liu Kang, and has worked on the development of games including Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and the ill fated 2000 third-person shooter: Mortal Kombat: Special Forces.

There was more than one version of the troubled Special Forces spin-off a limited few fans played at the turn of the millennium -- just one of the memories Tsui discussed with Mortal Kombat Online during a recent interview.

The retrospective is inspired by Insert Coin - a documentary project dedicated to the bustling arcade boom of Midway in the early nineties. Recently featured on MK Online, Tsui is seeking Kickstarter crowd funding for the project, which promises to unearth untold tales of Midway Games from the mouths of those who made them. Learn more about Insert Coin and consider joining Mortal Kombat Online in helping make it become a reality.

Update: Fans will be pleased to know Tremor will join the game as part of The Kombat Pack. The DLC fighter was revealed in a trailer along with Tanya in March, 2015.

The nebulous world of the fan petition is far from an exact science, often ranging from the absurd, to the unlikely. Change.org hosts the good and the bad indiscriminately, offering a free platform to collect e-signatures for just about anything. The distinction of supporters is dubious, but every now and then a petition garners so much interest it stands out from the crowd. Such is the case with Make Tremor A Playable Kombatant in Mortal Kombat X.

The petition has freshly counted more than 4,000 supporters, with more arriving each day. Even taking into account inflated numbers supplied by dummy posts and spoof votes, that's an impressive figure for a character whose existence dwells in spin-off obscurity, trivia, and fan-fiction.

Tremor first officially appeared in the ill fated 2000 third-person shooter: Mortal Kombat: Special Forces. He was given an unlikely reprieve in 2012 -- as featured by Mortal Kombat Online -- finding his way into PlayStation Vita versions of Mortal Kombat: Komplete Edition.

Fans in the Twittersphere will have become aware of the campaign through the tireless dedication of @TremorBD and the FeelTheTremor hashtag. His efforts as petition founder supporter have also been shared by various NetherRealm Studios staff, including Executive Producer Shaun Himmerick, and beleaguered series co-creator/notorious Special Forces denier: Ed Boon.

Cinema's fractured white knight Harvey Dent warned, "You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain." It's the perilous reality every long running video game franchise faces, sooner or later. Some series rise to the challenge, enjoying the vigour of reinvention. Others smash face-first into the pounding surf as they descend steeply from their wayward trip across the proverbial shark's back.

This week on Retronauts, the evergreen podcast tackled the subject of When Games Jump The Shark. You'll be shocked and appalled to hear Mortal Kombat among the list - but the Retronauts are taking the good with the bad.

Edit (Apr. 2): If you read it elsewhere, you might have been fooled, but if you were here on Mortal Kombat Online, you clearly knew it was all part of our annual April Fools tradition! We played this for the long game, but even with a genuine tweet from Ed Boon -- you couldn't be fooled! You guys are just too good! This article and the material within it was a complete fabrication. You can spew disdain for our juvenile behaviour on the forum, or come down from the high with a calming art tribute to Mortal Kombat's greatest hoax: Ermac! See you next year!

Well, it looks like the "others" have it! Since revealing his work on an unspecified Mortal Kombat in an interview with IGN [full story}; Kiefer Sutherland (24: Live Another Day, Pompeii) has been the absent subject of much speculation.

With expectations reasonably targeted at an anticipated sequel to 2011's Mortal Kombat -- the prime suspects for his unknown role revolved around new additions to the reboot line-up. Mortal Kombat Online Users voted MK4 big bad Shinnok as the most likely casting, but in response to our Kommunity Kountdown article, the star re-emerged briefly to clarify:

By his own admission, the John Tobias of twenty years ago had no idea he was creating one of the most successful franchises to come out of American gaming. As a young artist in Chicago, Tobias had big ideas, envisioning a fiction that endures to this day (in some shape or form), but the journey to 1992's breakout hit -- Mortal Kombat -- would take more than ideas.

Together with Ed Boon, Tobias holds the credit of co-creator of Mortal Kombat -- an acknowledgment that goes beyond the arcade and home consoles, to result in a massive multi-media phenomenon spawned from ideas and characters!

In Part 1 of our conversation with John Tobias, he took us through some of the early influences that helped shape the series to follow. From abandoned name choices, props and influences, to movie references and guest stars, the games origins are there to scrutinize.

In this second part of our twentieth anniversary retrospective, we continue the conversation, entering the explosion of Mortal Kombat into other mediums, and addressing the final chapter of Tobias' time with the series before his departure in 1999.

Modern Prometheus: John Tobias confronts Goro - brought to life for the 1995 film.

In April, Mortal Kombat Online featured classic Mortal Kombat characters who existed in hoaxes and rumor, as well as characters who were nestled deep within the games themselves. We also began the month with our customary April Fool, pulling on references somewhere in between, to allude to some vaguely prophetic, discarded phony DLC follow-ups.

If you're at all worried about spoilers for Kombat on the PlayStation Vita, it's at this point you might like to gouge your eyes out and run screaming into the night, desperately trying to unsee what has been seen [below].