What is the story behind Shao Kahn's mask and his supposed face? I know the creators were originally going to make him Tarkartan, but they dropped that idea. Is he really a demon? Or was he actually humanlike but somehow got his face burnt by Onaga like "Oh just because you poisoned me you think you can get away with this and look handsomely ruling my realm? Well fuck you bitch I'm going to burn almost your entire face so no citizen will ever serve you"? It would make sense for Kahn to be wearing that mask so he can be revered...and of course feared. Finally, where does his mask come from?

Well his face isn't burned or scarred or anything like that, he's got red eyes and spikes growing out of his eyebrows. That's gotta be natural.

Canonically, Shao Kahn used to be the Protector-God of Outworld, and gave up his rank when he took the throne from Onaga, because he decided he'd rather rule the mortals than stand back and give them advice like Raiden does.

So presumably, he CHOSE for his body to look the way it does, similar to how Raiden and the other gods aren't human in their natural states, they give themselves a "mortal form" to interact with humans. Of course, Kahn is probably permanently stuck with his body since he's not a god anymore...but he still has the "doesn't age" kind of immortality.

As for his helmet...well, if you look at Onaga, the back part of it, the big samurai neckplate that sticks out, they both have that in common. So far as I can tell, that helmet is just what the King of Outworld's Crown always looks like (which goes back to what I said about why Reiko wants to wear it), and Kahn just added a skull to the front of it to make himself look even scarier.

Maybe it's Jerrod's skull, I dunno. It can't be Onaga's because Onaga's corpse is still all in one piece in his tomb, as we see in Sindel's Deception ending. Maybe it's not a real skull at all, but a piece of metal molded to LOOK like a skull. Newer games make it look like bone and sometimes add fangs to the teeth, but it looked like molded metal in the original MK2 and 3.

How will Li Mei be relevant in your fan fiction and is there any additional aspects you want to develop or change about her from the canon?

Well...it's not a change from canon because she didn't have an Armageddon bio, so you can't change what doesn't exist...but I always thought her Deception ending was the most interesting thing that ever happened to her character.

And they never do explain WHY Taven finds her, of all people, fighting Shinnok in the Netherealm in MKA Konquest.

So basically I'm saying, I think that MKD ending came true, or should come true. I'm going to have her succumb to the mummy-corruption in her soul and side with Onaga, only to die in the final battle and, in the afterlife, come to her senses and try to redeem herself by, like, slaying demons and such.

She'll probably be one of the characters who dies during the Battle of Armageddon and doesn't come back, though. I never really thought she was all that unique or interesting, to be honest...and it wouldn't be much of an Armageddon if a whole lotta people didn't die in it, and I intend to have a lot less people coming back from the dead, so I'm only gonna have somewhere around 25 to 30 characters return in the Post-MKA fanfics. That means a little over half the cast of MKA will die and stay dead.

What happened to Shang Tsung after MK3? Did he just stay out of the spotlight like Kahn and live in isolation before Quan Chi arrives? Also, if Kung Lao was supposed to die in MK3, how did he return to the sequel? Did he just spontaneously clone himself? Also, how does Ermac in the first part just come from being Kahn's personal assassin to just flat out rejecting Outworld at the end of your story just because Liu Kang won the tournament? Also, how will Ermac develop from that point up to the end of Deception? Finally, will Liu Kang finally unite his spirit with his zombie body at the end? If so how far has Liu Kang would have developed to that point?

According to MKDA, Kahn locks him up in the dungeon for a while for failing again. Eventually he lets him out and, yeah, Shang pretty much lays low at his house with the acid-spitting buddhas until MKDA.



He didn't die, he just let everyone think he had so he could try to retire because he was sick of fighting and wanted to become a pacifist. He came out of retirement because he heard Goro was still alive and wanted to finally get his chance to avenge his ancestor.

My explanation for how he faked his death is going to be that it was kind of an accident, his wounded, unconscious body was still lying inside Kahn's castle when it was sucked back into Outworld as the merger reversed itself. So he woke up in Outworld while everyone else was on Earthrealm, and just decided to stay and live there for a while as a hermit instead of trying to find a portal home.



He's not rejecting Outworld, he tells Shang he CAN'T kill Liu at the end because it's too late, the tournament's already over and the Elder Gods are paying attention to what happens to Liu now so they won't allow any further cheating.

Plus the only reason Shang wants Ermac to fight Liu at that point is to protect him from getting beat up. Protecting people who have failed Kahn isn't Ermac's job.



He'll be pretty much the same until Kenshi frees him from Kahn's control in Deadly Alliance. My approach to his personality is, while he's under Kahn's control, he follows Kahn's orders, but if no order is given to do something evil, or if someone who isn't Kahn tries to order him to do something he knows he shouldn't do, he won't do evil things. And he can sense stuff because of his wisdom and psychic powers.
In other words, my Ermac's not going to rip anybody's arms off for disturbing his naptime.



No, my version of Armageddon will have the zombie be killed to stop its murderous rampage, and at the end, Liu's spirit is finally at peace and moves on to the afterlife.

Though his ghost will cameo again in my fanfics.

How will Kai be relevant in your storyline and how is there anything you'd change to make this character more popular akin to the original MK cast? What about Dairou?

Plus I know this sounds a little off, but lets just say your entire fan fiction would be printed in a 2-D rated-R animated series. For the first and second stories, who could you imagine voice acting the characters?

Kai will be introduced as sort of this young new pupil that Liu Kang is training, so he's basically trying to prove himself and become the next big hero like Liu was during MK1 thru 3.

He'll have important fights and look as good as I can make him look...but since Scorpion defeats Quan Chi and I plan to have Raiden in the final battle against Shinnok, there's only so much I can do for him. Perhaps I'll have him be the one to take out Belokk, who I'm treating as the subboss character in MK4's story since Goro, despite being the actual subboss, didn't actually do much in the plot and wasn't even working for the badguys.

I'll actually use Kai's MK4 ending where Raiden gives him his lightning staff, though, and have that be his first step on a journey where he walks around the world studying different philosophies and stuff and becomes this enlightened oracle-type guy sort of like Nightwolf when he returns in Armageddon. Kai will also be one of the ones who survives Armageddon and appears in the stuff I write after.



Well I've already mentioned before that I'm gonna use the original plan for Dairou from Krypt concept art, where his first appearance would be in MKDA as a rival for Kenshi because he uses two samurai swords and was hired to guard Shang's palace. So he'll be the one to nearly kill Kenshi (which leads to Sub-Zero saving him and the two of them teaming up in Deception) instead of Mavado doing it.

My thinking is that if the Seidan characters are tied into other parts of the game better, like having Dairou in MKDA and making Darrius a Red Dragon member, they won't seem pointless and disconnected from the story anymore, which is the biggest problem with them.

Dairou's other problem, of course, is that he's got an ugly design. I can fix that in the drawing stage.



Jeez, that's a tough one. Umm...I'll try to think of fitting people for the NPCs and new chars but I actually like most of the MK9 voice cast. There's a few I'd recast, but not many, so...if I don't mention a character here, then just assume I'd keep the same person who did it in the game.

Bo' Rai Cho - Greg Baldwin (When the original voice of Uncle Iroh from Avatar: The Last Airbender died, this is the guy who replaced him)

Nimbus Terrafaux - Charles Parnell (Jefferson Twilight on Venture Bros.)

Raiden - Do you suppose Christopher Lambert would do voice work?

Sub-Zero - Y'know, I think the voice the games currently have for him would fit fine for the older, Deadly Alliance version of the character...but he really should sound younger in the early games.

I'm tempted to go for stunt-casting and say Jensen Ackles as Bi-Han and Jared Padalecki for Kuai Liang because they play brothers who argue all the time on Supernatural, which is one of my favorite shows, and Ackles' VA work as Jason Todd in Batman: Under the Red Hood was amazing.
Alternatively, perhaps David Boreanaz for Kuai, just cuz he looks a lot like John Turk (which seems like a silly reason in voice-casting, I know, but it means the voice will fit the character's looks) and he did a good job as Green Lantern in JL: New Frontier.

Goro - Kevin Michael Richardson (Same guy who voiced him in the '95 movie)

Kintaro - Fred Tatascoire (Does lots of big growly guys like The Hulk, also Beast in Wolverine and the X-Men)

Shao Kahn - David Kaye (Megatron on Transformers: Beast Wars)

(Steve Ritchie, the guy who did Kahn's voice in the old arcade games and Shaolin Monks, would be nice...but rumor has it his hearing or voice has gone bad? A professional might be preferable anyway.)

Note that my Reptile does talk, unlike in MK9, but that the VA probably wouldn't matter because the hissing and dragging out all the S-words would probably make their voice unrecognizable anyway. And I'm not sure if I'm going to have Skarlet talk yet or not since she's supposed to be kind of a mentally-blank, order-following golem at first.

And here's a few from later games that just kinda popped in my head while I was thinking about voice actors:

Sindel - Kate Mulgrew (Flemeth in Dragon Age: Origins)

Tanya - Gina Torres (Superwoman in JL: Crisis on Two Earths)

Shinnok - Tim Curry (The main villain in Brutal Legend, also played Palpatine in a few episodes of Star Wars: Clone Wars)

Daegon - Clancy Brown (Lex Luthor in Superman/JLU)

I believe reading somewhere in one of your posts that once you get to Deception story arc you'll be changing up some canon appearances of the characters (throughout the Konquest mode, if I'm not mistaken).

What I was curious about is whether or not you'll change up the ending to Deadly Alliance? Does any part of you think that maybe the heroes of Earthrealm will end up stopping the DA? Perhaps Kung Lao defeating Shang Tsung, which I would like to see heavily similar to his ending (save for Liu Kang's soul resting).

If there was an MK anime, who would you see voice casting the characters?

Starting with those of the MK2011.

He's staying as close to the canon as humanly possible, the heroes are still going to lose in Deadly Alliance. The main heroes are just not gonna get killed and turned into undead slaves, just brainwashed living slaves.

Which I think makes better sense. ^^

Pretty sure I just answered that...

I guess to clarify, I think that if the voice actors involved are all talented professionals at acting, and sound like the character should sound, then the same people should always play the same characters, no matter which version of the universe it is.

Like, I'm the sort of person who is a bit annoyed when these new DC comics DVD movies cast a different voice for Batman every time. I don't care if it's an alternate timeline or something, there's only ONE Batman. Kevin Conroy should play him in EVERYTHING animated or video game.

By the same token, Patrick Seitz did a good enough Scorpion in MK9 that he should just permanently be Scorpion forever. If there was an MK cartoon or anime, he should be Scorpion's voice in that too, and if the cartoon/anime was based on the Razorverse, he should still be Scorpion. (Speaking of which, I actually wish Ed would stop doing the "Get Over Here" and let Seitz do it so it'd match the rest of his dialogue.)

And if I say "The guy who played Kahn sucked, they should get David Kaye from Beast Wars", then I mean that guy should have voiced Kahn in the game, should voice Kahn on TV, and should voice Kahn in the Razorverse too.

It's all one thing to me, there's no logical reason why a person in an alternate universe, who's the same in every other way, would have a different voice, so get ONE actor and stick with them in everything forever.

Interesting choice ideas, especially for Shao Kahn. I really loved Jeffrey Meek's version of the character in MK: Conquest, and I think his voice could be good in video games and animated shows/movies.

Yeah, I love Meek, he had a great Kahn voice, but I tried to stick to actors who have already done quality voice work in the past because there's a lot of actors who are great live, but suck at voice acting, so you never really know if one will be good at the other.

Being physically present on sets, interacting with others in the moment, helps actors get into the role and believe in what they're creating. That's why sometimes movies with a lot of bluescreen and CG characters have stiff acting in them, like the Star Wars prequels - the real actors have to work that much harder to pretend that the situation they're in is real, because they're not standing in a forest talking to Jar Jar Binks, they're standing in an all-blue room talking to a tennis ball on a stick while a stagehand shouts bland versions of Jar Jar's lines from somewhere off-camera.

Actors who have a lot of experience with voice work have practice sitting all by themselves in front of a microphone pretending to be somewhere else talking to people who aren't really there, they know how to make it sound natural and believable. It's a special skill they've worked to get good at that not everybody has.

A lot of those DC comics DVD movies I was complaining about because they recast Batman? They get famous people from popular TV shows to do the voices a lot...and a lot of those guys give really bland, stiff-sounding performances because they've never done voice work before, they're not practiced at it.

You want to hear an impressive VA performance? There's an episode in the last season of Transformers Animated about Ratchet fighting Shockwave and Megatron, with many scenes where those three characters are the only ones in them, talking to each other. All three characters are played by the SAME guy, Corey Burton. And all three have COMPLETELY different sounding voices.

I understand where you're coming from. I can see Shao Kahn being voiced by David Kaye as I can see him pulling off that sort of majestic tone yet being sinister. To me, the Sub-Zero brothers are a little bit tricky to pull off. The voice actor for him in MK 2011 was alright, I guess... I could see Phil LaMarr voicing Jax. His voice for John Stewart was great, and I could see something similar for Jax.

Great idea for Kate Mulgrew as Sindel. I love her voice acting as Red Claw in Batman: TAS. As for Corey Burton, he is just awesome. Megatron and Ratchet are my two top favorites in Transformers: Animated. He has that great range indeed.

Interesting idea for Tim Curry as Shinnok. One thing that kind of bothers me about Shinnok is his appearance and in a way his behavior. Didn't part of his backstory involve him being tortured in the Netherrealm? There was one member here who did his own take on Shinnok as being more insane, and when I thought about it, it made sense. Do you have any ideas for how you'd want Shinnok to look? How would you explain his demon form?

Phil LaMarr's okay, but I would prefer to avoid VAs whose voices are very easy to recognize because they're in EVERYTHING already and they always sound like themselves, like him, Steve Blum, Jennifer Hale, Nolan North, and Johnny Yong Bosch.

I find it makes a character way less memorable when every time you hear them talk, you're thinking of other characters the same guy has played...unless that character is deliberately supposed to be similar to the more famous one.

For example, when Jen Hale voiced Ms. Marvel in the Avengers cartoon, I loved it because it reminded me of FemShep from Mass Effect, because Carol Danvers is supposed to be kind of a military badass...but when Hale voiced Star Sapphire in GL: The Animated Series, I didn't like it because that character shouldn't remind me of FemShep.

Also, I rather liked Jax's MK9 VA...but honestly, if you're gonna recast Jax, why not get Michael Jai White? He's done voice acting, there's been a Black Dynamite cartoon.

I think...the thing that makes Shinnok dangerous and interesting as a main villain, to me, is that unlike Shao Kahn, he's not an angry screaming guy who uses brute force to conquer. Shinnok is a master planner, he plays the long game and manipulates people like chess pieces. One of the reasons I picked Tim Curry, besides the fact that he's played Satan-esque characters before, is like I said, he voiced Palpatine from Star Wars once. And Shinnok is very similar to Palpatine.
Anyway, Shinnok is twisted and very bitter about the way he's been treated in the past, no doubt...torture is actually his primary motivation. And I don't just mean in the Netherealm.
In my own attempts to explore his motivations or rather, GIVE him one for once, I asked myself...WHY he would want to turn on the other Elder Gods and rule above them in the first place? WHY does he want to conquer Earthrealm, what does he care about mortals for? The only answer that makes sense to me is that, well, the One Being tortured and enslaved the Elder Gods before they sorta-killed him, right? And mortals are just characters the One Being has created while he coma-dreams, right? Every living person in the realms is a tiny little piece of the One Being.
I figure Shinnok wants to rule them as revenge, to give the One Being a taste of his own medicine. He's against the Elder Gods because they stay away from the mortals and don't get involved because they're scared of waking TOB up, whereas Shinnok's like "We killed the dude once already, what's to be afraid of? Why NOT subjugate what's left of him?" and then goes all "If you're not with me, then you're against me"
...but that said, I think making him seem too crazy, like cackling mad or prone to outbursts of temper, would undermine his whole intelligent master-planner thing.

According to Armageddon, Shinnok's power literally comes from the Throne of Hell. He has to sit in it to recharge or something like that. (Granted, it was possible he was lying to Taven when he said that, but you'd think the son of a protector-god would have been taught by his dad how things work in the other realms and parts of the pantheon he's a part of.)
Obviously, his Elder God powers were put inside the amulet and what was left was taken from him when he fell, so he had to get new ones.
Either he magically stole Lucifer's powers when he dethroned him, or the throne itself has always been a magical item that grants power to Hell's rulers and protectors. Which kinda makes sense, it explains why his moves and story-abilities all revolve around death, like big skeleton hands and resurrecting people. His ability to transform into a big demon at the end of Mythologies would, then, be part of the same package.
As far as his appearance, I'm going to go for something tall and robed, a combination of his Mythologies and Armageddon costumes, and tone down all the bluish-green he wears, so that his color scheme looks a little less garish. As I already wrote into a scene in my MK1 script outline, I imagine his goofy red pope hat as looking more like a crown shaped like demon horns. That's kinda how they tried to reinvision it in Armageddon and I'll try to make that shape even more clear when I draw it.

I imagine Shinnok looking sick with some black, red, and gold schemes going on.

The description of what your Shinnok will look like sounds great!! Can't wait to see it.

Can i ask that you consider showing his hair in his alt costume, ever since I seen THIS art (Bottom right one) I've loved the idea and now I hope he will have a similar costume in his next game appearance.

I'll take it under consideration, but no promises. I wouldn't want him to look too much like all the other ponytail guys like Fujin, Human Sektor, and Hotaru...

How will you have Kitana cope with Liu Kang's death?

I thought MKDA handled it pretty well, if perhaps a bit too brief and understated. Of course, that game didn't have "scenes", so I imagine if we got to see the parts where she finds out from Liu's dead from Kung Lao, gets emotional, and decides to join him in training with Bo' Rai Cho and getting revenge on the Deadly Alliance, as we will in my version, it'll be a bit more meaningful I think.

How do Chameleon and Khameleon fit into the story? Are they members of the same race as Reptile? How would Reptile respond to the presence of his kind? Will the sequel story cover this?

What do you plan on doing with Sareena and Khameleon?

My plan for Chameleon is to basically explain him as a Flesh Pits creation designed to be Shao Kahn's bodyguard during MK3. One of the main reasons Raptors have gone extinct is because Shang has been killing and dissecting them to figure out how their powers work, which leads to him creating one whose power is sort of a cross between their natural skin color-changing invisibility and Shang's own morphing, which is why Cham can mimic other peoples' powers.

Khameleon will have pretty much the same story she always has, trying to get Reptile on her side but him being too scared of Kahn to betray him. I might use her in the post-Armageddon stuff. I haven't decided yet if I really have a place for the Raptor race.

Sareena...may have a small cameo in MK4. She'll definitely be in MKDA thru Armageddon like she's supposed to. After that...let me just say two things: Sareena's my favorite female character in the entire series...and I favor a relationship between her and Kuai Liang. So...she will factor into the Post-Armageddon fanfic stuff. Not that the two of them will be joined at the hip or anything, she'll have her own story and goals. All that stuff is still in very early idea stages, though.