Hey Razor, is your Kano American-Japanese, as Tobias had originally intended before the character was changed to Australian?

Naw, he's been Australian in more games than not, and it gives him personality where otherwise he'd be pretty generic and bland, so I wouldn't see the point in trying to go back to the MK1 version.

Will Bi Han's rebirth as Noob Saibot be shown? Or will he just pop up with no introduction like when he originally debuted?

He'll just pop up. It seems thematically appropriate to me that since he's a hidden character, he be mysterious and some characters will find him "familiar", but it not be revealed to the audience who he is until Kuai and Scorpion find out in 4.

Besides, the scene of his transformation would be nearly a copy of the one we already saw with Scorpion in MK1.

Sounds good to me. Now, here's a tough one, in the first tournament, Shang's guards killed any Kombatants not killed in battle. What's stopping Kahn's warriors from killing the Earthrealm Kombatants in this tournament, like how your bracket has Johnny and Kung losing to Mileena and Shang. Someone intervenes, like Raiden killing Kintaro to save Jax? Or the bad guys are just that lazy this time around, lol.

I'm, uh...still working that one out. It's one of the reasons MK2's not done yet.
'Course, one wonders why Ermac and whoever eliminated Smoke from the tournament in MK9 let him and Johnny live after that scene where Kahn gets impatient and zaps the monk after Kitana hesitates to kill him...

Obviously because bad writing, since Ermac tele-ripped Jax's arms off earlier. You do that and then you let a washed up movie star live with practically no permanent injury? Yeah, it is quite a tough one to figure out. Maybe Kahn just has his goons rough 'em up and throw them in the dungeon or something, threatening to execute them all later if Liu fails to beat him at the end of the tournament?

But your Raiden needs to be protective of Earthrealm heroes,not the way he gave Kuai Liang to Lin Kuei like in MK9 lol.

What saddens me is that this is still an outline and won't be written into a proper story. Damn shame, but I understand how much time and effort it'd take to make it into something more.

True, but he has no authority in Outworld, he's already been forced to agree to the tournament rules Shang/Kahn proposed, and it's already been established for 500 years that Mortal Kombat's rules have been corrupted because the Shaolin are no longer the grandmasters, and matches are now to the death unless the fighters themselves choose to spare their opponent, and Raiden never did anything about it before, probably because he couldn't.



Well...it is mostly due to recognizing my own limitations...

But I've also always kinda hoped other people would come along, go "Y'know what? This is more than just one person's fanfic interpretation, It's so spot-on I'd like to adopt this universe as the canon for me and work within it as well" and be willing to pick up the ball as a co-writer or want to draw a fan-comic of it or something like that. I've always preferred collaboration to working alone anyway...although I can understand why that hasn't really happened since very few people would want to work on a fanfic where someone else is their editor and has the final say, and it's rare to find people doing things for free as a hobby who have serious skill, and the time and dedication to churn out a big project like this would be.
I mean even I don't really devote the amount of time to it I really should, I started like 5 years ago and I'm still only halfway done with MK2, and I'm not even making a full story, I'm just doing costume designs and script outlines.
And then there's the fact that fan fiction is a dead artform and has been for like 12 years, the only people who do it anymore are lonely girls writing romance novels for themselves, full of "shipping", "crack pairings", and "self-inserts"/"Mary Sues", and even when it was a popular thing, adherence to canon and doing novelizations of game plots wasn't common.

Wish I'd known this 2 years ago, I would have gladly offered to help.

Be my guest, sir. I'm not gonna say no after I just sat there and said "I wish other people would write fanfic of my outline"...

I know this will probably sound like a really stupid question, but since it was the only time he didn't have any hair, are you gonna give a reason why Kano ends up completely bald during the MK3//UMK3/MKT timeline?

Eh, I imagine the shaved head is just him trying to clean up and look less sloppy and more professional to go with his fancy Outworld Army rank and new uniform. After all, Kano is more than just a grimy mob boss, he's supposed to be a professional mercenary who had actual military training before he broke bad, a bit like DC's Deathstroke.
Alternatively, sometimes dudes who are going bald, as Kano clearly is, like to just shave it off because it might look better that way. Why did he grow it back in MKDA? Maybe because he realized that, much like Bill Murray, his hairline magically stopped receding at a certain point and has been the same shape for ten years?
Maybe he always shaves it, lets it go for a couple months, and then shaves it again, and we only happened to see him at the shaved part of the cycle once? I have a friend who deals with his hair, or lack thereof, that way, rather than going to the trouble of keeping it shaved every day.
I'm not sure a scene where he shaves his head and explains why is really necessary for the plot, if MK3 were a movie, that's the kind of thing that would end up on the cutting room floor.

Funny, I was considering whether to ask the "Bald-Kano" question...

Anyways, in the MK2 script will there be any foreshadowing to the Lin Kuei's cyber-initiation for MK3? I feel like that'd be a pretty complex/time consuming project that would take a fair amount of years to complete... but then have we ever been told how technologically advanced the Lin Kuei were?

In Armageddon, after Sub-Zero relocated the clan and became Grandmaster, it always looked very ancient to me, no technology what-so-ever. But then that made me wonder, what about when Grandmaster Orniro ran the clan, how different were things technology-wise?

Cool, I was just curious. I do like the idea of him doing it to look more professional, though. That's also a good question about the Cyber Initiative, too. It got me thinking about Jax's arms. If Jax made them himself, that had to have taken quite some time in order to have them ready around the time the Outworld invasion comes along. So yeah, how long after the MK2 tournament would Kahn's invasion take place?

There will indeed.

I've already had one slight hint towards the Cyber Initiative in the MK1 script - in the Black Dragon warehouse scene. Similar to in Legacy, the reason Jax's team is currently after them is because they stole a shipment of bionics from the Department of Defense, and there are some leftover parts because they've just shipped what they stole to the doctor who did Kano and Hsu Hao's implants, and who it will later be revealed is the guy the Lin Kuei hired to automate them.

Also, the leftover parts will be used by Kabal to save himself from death after the Extermination Squads attack him in MK3.

So to summarize: in my version, these various groups (including Jax with his arms) didn't invent their own tech, the U.S. government did and they all got their hands on it by different means. Jax does assemble the arms himself, though. I'm going to make a point of it in the script that he has a science and engineering background, to set up the fact that he's the one who invents the OIA's Techno-Portal after MK3, and he's the one who figures out how to reprogram cyberninjas.

As for the Lin Kuei's actual level of technology, by themselves...my thought is they're not sci-fi, but they are modern. Which is why my Bi-Han costume design looks sleeker and more like plastic and spandex compared to the way Scorpion dresses, and why his alt comes with night-vision goggles and a grenade or smokebomb.

And conversely, my interpretation of Kuai Liang's character is that he isn't really into the tech stuff, he's a traditionalist, that's why his costume design is more fancy old-fashioned looking armor and why HIS version of the Lin Kuei from MKDA/Armageddon doesn't use tech and looks more like a throwback to ancient times.

About the Sub-Zero brothers, that actually makes more sense given how Kuai Liang's Lin Kuei clan operates. Also, it would make sense for Bi-Han to use some modern technology, which could perhaps explain how he was able to reprogram Smoke.

About Kano, I actually found him to be the most fun to play as in MK3-MKT compared to the other games. The bald look makes him look more menacing, imo. I think it would be good to have those affiliated with Shao Kahn to have a shared insignia, something that Kano should even have during MK3's story. Considering that his MK3 story revolves a fair bit on showing Shao Kahn's troops how to use Earth's advanced weapons, it would actually make sense if Kano's gameplay reflected that by playing somewhat like Deathstroke in Injustice.

What kind of approach would you take with Cyrax's character and backstory? He does feel a bit of the odd man out since the other Lin Kuei are a bit easier defined.

I felt Cyrax's character was inconsistent/didn't make much sense in MK9 because his motivation for not wanting to be a robot revolved around belief in chi and the power of human ability, but he is the only member of the Lin Kuei who HAS no actual chi-powers and fights with tools like Batman.

Also, his desire to avoid the initiative overlaps with Smoke's MK3 story too much for my liking. If everybody is running away from the clan, then the whole "no one is allowed to leave" thing means a lot less.

I preferred the way his MK Gold ending characterized him as REGRETTING becoming a cyborg, as if he originally said yes, only to later realize what he had lost after malfunctioning and want his soul back.

So my approach is going to be to characterize him as different from most members of the Lin Kuei in that he's not in the clan because it runs in the family, or because he was abducted as a kid or asked to join for his gifts, he's in the clan because HE sought THEM out, because he heard they were the best in the world and wanted to be one too, so he's a rookie (a member of the same "class" of younger members as Kuai and Smoke. They're all friends with one another because they trained together.) who had to work hard to earn his way in because of the fact that he doesn't have a special ability and is still trying to prove himself - so he uses his knowledge of alchemy and potions and such as almost a superpower, and embraces technology and welcomes any advantage he can have, so he'll actually volunteer for the Cyber-Initiative because it's his chance to have "powers" and be special/important to the clan.

Are you planning to come up with a name for the cyber doctor, and will he still resemble Deadshot like he does in Kabal's ending?

Ah yes, I remember now. However, I never quite understood the "soul" issue, whether they actually had their souls removed or if it was symbolic. Sure, Jax and Sonya used some machine to restore Cyrax's "human psyche", but when I think in terms of MK's story, I think souls are more of an issue of some sort of magic.

Another thing that bugs me about the series, especially with MK9, is that Cyrax and Sektor aren't given real names yet real names were thought of for Smoke and the Sub-Zero brothers. If the Lin Kuei is an ancient Chinese clan of ninja-like assassins, "Sektor" and "Cyrax" don't make sense as codenames. I got to thinking that those are codenames that are thought of by Westerners who help with the cyber initiative.

On a side note, I had been thinking about how I would do my own take on MK's story, but it wouldn't be as close to the canon as what you're going for. I'm thinking more in Transformers: Animated style with certain different takes. For example, I was thinking that characters like Kobra and Kenshi would fit well into MK1's story and they would be built up from there.

Actually, "Sektor" does make sense.

Sektor's superpower is teleportation and his signature weapon is homing missiles. A Sector is a word for a location. It's just spelled with a K-for-Kombat.

"Cyrax" being gibberish though is one of the reasons I'm portraying him as a rookie, I'm considering him maybe not having a codename yet until after he becomes a robot like he's still in training and hasn't been made a field agent yet (Or changing his codename to "Anthrax" since he uses chemical weapons, and saying "Cyrax" is short for "Cyber-Anthrax" or something like that). But I'm not really sure I want to invent real first and last names for them because I fear that the games one day will reveal their real names and then I'll have to go back and retcon my own writing to match the canon, which I'd rather not be stuck in a position where I'd have to do that.
Also, from a character standpoint, perhaps it would be unprofessional in the clan to use each other's real names except between family and best friends. I don't think Sub or Smoke would get that familiar with Sektor and Cyrax, and I imagine the Grandmaster is the kind of guy who would call his own son by his codename rather than his birth name.

As a third point, I'm just really bad at coming up with names. It's one of the main reasons I've never entered any of the new characters I'm developing for my post-Armageddon continuation of the story into the KAK tournaments, none of them have names I'm happy with yet.

As for the Cyberninjas losing their souls, it has to be literal, not symbolic, because it's the only thing that saved them when Shao Kahn temporarily sucked the souls out of everyone on Earth in MK3. That said, I don't think the souls actually left their bodies when they became robots, and then magically return when they break free of their programming, I just think that the technology taking their free will away makes the soul dormant, like dimming a light, and because the light is so dim, the soul-sucking magic can't detect them. (The soul thing might also have something to do with why becoming a cyborg causes people to lose their natural powers and they have to be replaced by tech-versions of the same moves, i.e. Smoke losing his Enenra abilities and creating clouds of nanobots instead)

On the subject of the Cyber Ninjas, I might have missed this if it was already answered, but how would you draw your version of Cyber Sub-Zero? The MK9 story ramifications aside, I recall you saying you didn't like the design, so how would you redesign him?

I'd make him look more like the MK3 cyborgs or Deadly Alliance Cyrax, I suppose, since that's how I prefer the cyborgs to look in general? I've never given it much thought.