Question that came to mind... Will Kitana and Sindel ever reach the conversation of how/why Sindel killed herself way back when, after Kahn conquered Edenia and Kitana was still a baby? Like does Kitana ever discover Sindel’s suicide, is that something she deducted on her own or something Kahn told her about in her childhood? And would that be something she’d hold her mother in contempt for in the back of her mind, because Sindel basically abandoned Kitana, left her in Kahn’s hands and to grow up without a mother?

Also, concerning Jax... In MK2 he is the most “normal” of the cast. How will you be handling his reaction to the supernatural, entering another realm, trusting all these people he's just met and all that stuff? Since in MK9, in general I found the normal characters’ reactions to the supernatural very underwhelming.

And well, since your art question is right there, what popped into my mind upon reading it was Blaze being surrounded by miniature 'fiery' portals, if that makes some sort of sense? Like, each portal would mirror the environment of the six main realms and Blaze could be in the center observing one of the mini portals? Also, Kahn looks great, know I'm a little late to react, but I was very impressed and glad you've stuck with his classic design.

I figure Kahn would have told her about it as she was growing up but painted Sindel in a bad light, like "she was a unwell, killing herself was selfish and cowardly, she abandoned us", etc.

And some of that I'm sure will be used as taunts by the evil, mind controlled version of Sindel in 3, but at this point Kitana will be all like "Well I know Kahn was evil and a liar now and I know you're not yourself, so this must all be untrue too, I can see how she'd be driven to despair and take her own life"



Well I'll be following the MK2 comic's lead on a lot of that stuff, Johnny is the first one Jax meets and he interrogates him trying to find Sonya, and doesn't believe any of his story, but keeps witnessing more and more evidence.

Plus, as I mentioned, I intend to play up Jax's science background so him inventing things like his arms or the OIA's portal doesn't come out of nowhere. So when he sees the portal to Outworld for the first time, it's not "What is this magic bullshit", it's "Hey, a real Einstein-Rosen Bridge!" Kinda like Natalie Portman's character in Thor.

Plus, y'know, Jax already has chi moves so he's not entirely surprised. It's like the moment I have in MK1 where Raiden tells Johnny "you didn't think you were special, did you?" because Johnny has moves, he just didn't know about everybody else's magic.

A lot of effort was put into this, and for that I'm very appreciative. I really hope you never abandon this project. It's everything I've wanted to see realised in this series. And if someone ever decided to novelise it, that'd just be swell, but it will probably never happen for obvious reasons. I pretty much agree with what everyone has already said, but I'll go ahead and say/ ask things anyway.

I was always under the impression that Kano was never the Black Dragon's leader, but more like a charismatic figurehead, while the clan had a Grandmaster similar to the Lin Kuei, like in MK: Conquest, so perhaps you could consider that.

Kung Lao had a pacifist personality even before MKII; I could have sworn I remember reading something about how he was originally chosen to represent the Shaolin and White Lotus, but he declined due to being pacifist.

MKI also said that contestants, (or at least some), were only invited to the tournament, in exceptions like Sonya. Perhaps the story should have included and elaborated on that; who would have approached each character with the invitation and how would the encounter go about?

Wasn't it stated somewhere that Bi-Han was the one who stuck to traditionalism and conventional combat? Instead of making Kuai Liang the original traditionalist, perhaps consider making it that Liang becomes a traditionalist after his death, or maybe after the Cyber Initiative.

One thing I've never understood about Bi-Han and the Lin Kuei is the whole "getting rich and retiring." How does one "retire" from the Lin Kuei by choice? And how do assassins get paid for their own work if they're supposed to be blindly loyal servants to the Grandmaster? Wouldn't assassins work merely to serve their clan, especially if a lot of them were kidnapped and raised to serve, which was why they were expected to comply with automation? Granted, a lot of them joined the clan by choice, and if I recall correctly, the Sub-Zero brothers probably grew up with their father being a clan member who probably encouraged them to join by choice because MK: Deception shows an ancestor of Sub-Zero. But still, the clan seemed to expect utmost obedience to the point of slavery. I imagine that's why it seemed likely to have been removed from MK9 that Bi-Han served the clan to get paid.

I really liked what you did with Liu Kang's story, explaining how he was able to defeat Goro and actually making Goro sound like a warrior worthy of being a Mortal Kombat champion, and showing his struggles of whether or not to kill his opponents and the use of doppelgangers and phantom clones. And especially the iconic Shang Tsung laugh after Liu Kang killed his doppelganger.

I originally had a problem with accepting Raiden as a participant because then it leaves the question as to why he didn't just try to win the other tournaments or why he risked losing to Liu Kang who might have lost to Goro. But then Raiden probably wouldn't want the responsibility of being champion as it would probably demand too much of him as he already has too much to work with being Earthrealm's head guardian.

I liked how you incorporated Raiden performing fatalities for the sake of mercy, and his attempt to convince Liu Kang to kill certain opponents might be a foreshadowing on the monk's rampage in Outworld and possibly killing certain opponents (or nearly). I imagine you might incorporate Liu Kang's flaming fist fatality on Shao Kahn from MK9 to tie in with this? Perhaps even on young Shang Tsung, too?

Why does Jade replace Scorpion against Liu Kang in your planned MKII tournament bracket, having not been part of the tournament at all?

How come Ermac wouldn't be part of the MKII tournament? I thought he should've been a creation that was made a little before MK3, with Shao Kahn more determined to kill Liu Kang and the rest of the Earthrealm warriors and such, but I suppose you were more intent on sticking with Errormacro's origins from MK1.

How come Shao Kahn is part of the tournament bracket as if he's replaced Goro's role, or is it a random scuffle between him and Kang?, and how does Liu Kang stand a chance against him if it's implied Kang would have lost to Goro without Great Kung Lao's visions?

As for preventing character deaths when they lose, maybe as others have said with Raiden intervening, that's where the likes of Smoke could drop in to prevent fatalities?

Another thing, maybe you could have pre-injured Kabal in Outworld in reference to MK:SM and use that as an opportunity to show he had a lot of his powers before MK3. His reasons for being there may be looking for Kano or something. And maybe he could even be the reason one of the characters is saved from a fatality. My lame justification for this is his concept came from the original Baraka idea with the hookswords and such, so maybe you could put him in there for that reason like how you decided to put Ermac in MK1 just 'cuz that's where his rumour started. Who knows, maybe that's where he'd get his hookswords from.

Also, I liked how you made it so Kung Lao and Liu Kang /didn't/ know Raiden personally. I thought it kind of took away from Kang's story that he was there in Mortal Kombat to expose Shang Tsung's tournament, and also makes Kai and Raiden's bond more meaningful.

I can kinda see how you'd get that impression, but I'm fairly certain he's directly referred to as their leader in several games.



As far as I know, that's an interpretation popularized by a user here named XiahouDun who used to post in-depth analyses of the story and characters. I've only ever seen the game or comic say he didn't go 'cause he didn't want to "abandon the White Lotus", which just plain doesn't make sense.



Actually, I think I did cover every main character's invitation. We don't see them all, Johnny's invitation is the only one delivered onscreen, but they're all mentioned.

Kano's invitation came in the guise of Shang wanting to meet for a business deal. Raiden's was given offscreen but Shang talks about it in dialogue. Liu's was given to the Shaolin Temple, not to him personally. Sub-Zero's was given onscreen at the end of Mythologies so it's not shown here but it's talked about. And Scorpion wasn't invited but Quan Chi arranged permission for his attendance.



Yeah, Kuai was the modern one and Bi-Han was old-fashioned according to the MK2 comic.

I've mentioned this somewhere in the thread before, I find it out of character for Kuai Liang to be the one who likes tech, because he wears the most old fashioned and armor-y costumes in every game, and because Bi-Han, as Noob, has no problem using cyborgs or understanding how to reprogram Cyber-Smoke in Deception.

So call it a retcon that I switched their personalities from what they are in the MK2 comic, but I'd say Midway retconned it first.



It's a very good question, I've wondered about that myself.

The way I figure it, Sub was going to take the money for himself and use it to disappear.



I find flaming fist kinda boring, honestly. I only used it on the Mirror Match because I needed something quick and surprising. In the future, Liu's rage and desire to kill will be represented by the morph into a dragon, since MK2 is the start of him having that as a Fatality and I'm going to try to work "how/why can he do that?" into the story.



Because she's the "?" on the arcade ladder right before the bosses.



I dunno, I'm just not using him because he wasn't in the game and he was an MK1 rumor, not an MK2 rumor. I guess you could say that since he's the most powerful member of Kahn's army, he saves him for special occasions/secret assassinations?



The game specifically said that part of the MK2 challenge is it's held in Outworld AND Kahn is the final challenge.



I dunno, I didn't particularly like Kabal's appearance in MKSM. I sort of have my own plans for what he's been up to between MK1 and 3 anyway, to set up why the Extermination Squads would interpret one of Kano's allies as a threat and attack him when the invasion starts.

>I find it out of character for Kuai Liang to be the one who likes tech, because he wears the most old fashioned and armor-y costumes in every game

Only after MK3/4, which would make sense, considering the Cyber Initiative represented how technology is bad and Kuai would probably think "Bi-Han was right." I think it could represent a dramatic character development instead of a retcon.

Still, it would make sense that Bi-Han, someone who acts like his days are coming to an end and is profit-driven, would use high-tech gadgets. But at the same time, I feel like one of the main reasons he wanted to retire from the Lin Kuei was probably /because/ he felt like he was becoming obsolete.

>and because Bi-Han, as Noob, has no problem using cyborgs or understanding how to reprogram Cyber-Smoke in Deception.

Of course he wouldn't; he lost any sense of honour and was willing to do anything to achieve more power. But, your retcon does explain how he'd know how to operate cyborgs.

>The way I figure it, Sub was going to take the money for himself and use it to disappear.

What about when Bi-Han told Raiden that he was paid for his past assignments in Mythologies?

Also, don't you think that would leave his brother in a potential shit storm? lol

>Because she's the "?" on the arcade ladder right before the bosses.

Yeah, but how would you explain it in-story?

Even in MK2, Kuai's dominant personality trait is a desire to honor his family and legacy, despite the fact that working for an assassin's guild is a moral conflict of interest for him.

The need that's been driven into him since his childhood, to live up to 5 generations of Lin Kuei named Sub-Zero, is the ONLY reason he kills people, something that he's clearly uncomfortable with. Being brought up in that shadow and trying to own it haunts him to the point that he probably regrets having to leave the clan. To the point that even during a period where he's swearing "I'm not a Lin Kuei anymore", he wears his brother's uniform while fighting Shinnok. To the point that he comes BACK to the clan to take command of it and make it something worth honoring. To the point that he wants to train someone to replace him so that the legacy will live on and his family name won't end with him.

That is not the position of a man who believes in throwing away old traditions and embracing mechanical weaponry or wearing a suit and tie and handing out business cards like he did in the comic.

And MK9 and Shaolin Monks, both retellings of MK2, add to the whole "he wears more ancient looking armor than any other ninja" thing, while Bi-Han's been wearing cheap plastic armguards that look like they were manufactured on an assembly line in Mythologies, which is the game I based his costume design on in my own art.

I just think this is an instance where the comic's portrayal was sort of an early idea that didn't work so well and is superceded by what came after, rather than a situation that would suggest character development like "I was into the fancy VTOL jet and all, but after the whole robot thing, now I want my clan to swear off electricity and live like the Amish."

It just doesn't seem to fit Kuai to have EVER been interested in modernity given that he's always been a family-history buff even way before the Cryomancer Armor storyline, nor does it fit Bi-Han, the guy who all throughout Mythologies is proud of how blindly loyal to the clan he is, to have rejected anything the Grandmaster was pushing for. The only time he EVER protested an assignment was when it came from Quan Chi, because he was mad Quan hired Scorpion and the competition made the map mission more dangerous for him.



I imagine the Lin Kuei does give their men a cut of each assignment, so they have spending money out in the world and so they don't go "y'know, we can all kill with our bare hands and we have superpowers, why are we slaves? Let's just free ourselves."



I honestly don't think Bi-Han cared about his brother THAT much.

I don't know how well it comes across when you read the outline, but all those scenes where Sub is telling Raiden he's trying to change and do good stuff now...he's supposed to sound like he's full of shit and just trying to defend himself. Really, Bi-Han and Noob Saibot are almost not at all different in personality.

The only change is that once he becomes a demon, he has a realization about himself, about how little he ever really cared, how his few shreds of compassion and humanity were just a token effort, a lie he'd been telling himself to feel like a decent person, so he finally lets his human attachments go and embraces what a self-serving asshole he is. It's never been a case of possession or anything like that, he's just forced to accept his true nature.

I mean, look at this line from Noob's Deception ending:

"Noob Saibot was surprised to see how much stronger his brother had become. If he were still Lin Kuei, still human, he would probably have shown some degree of pride."

SOME degree of pride? PROBABLY? That's all?

So...yeah, Bi-Han...not the most loving brother a guy could have.



Well Scorpion chooses to abandon the tournament after his fight with Sub-Zero. Because, y'know, once he's dealt with the shit he came there for, why would he care?

So rather than allow Liu Kang to skip a round because he doesn't have an opponent anymore, Kahn subs Jade in, because she's available, i.e. not already elsewhere in the bracket or previously eliminated.

I completely agree with your ideas on Sub-Zero now. Very well thought. And it did indeed come off that Bi-Han was trying to mask his self-interest with "good" intentions to Raiden.

I was going to keep bothering about the Jade thing, since Shang Tsung doesn't get a replacement opponent, but then I realised stacking the odds against Liu Kang would be, perhaps, a penalty against Earthrealm for Raiden's actions against Kintaro, and perhaps for what else Raiden might have done to stop fatalities on Earthrealm participants.

I'm loving your interpretations. Please don't stop. The art concepts are superb.

Is it weird to think that Sareena could "give birth" to Noob Saibot as a punishment for betraying Quan Chi? And if Noob Saibot was ever killed she would have to go through the same procedure again and again? I don't know, that idea popped into my head after watching some Game of Thrones.

Man, I don't even...

Seems like something Quan Chi would do. I think.

What I'm having a hard time with is the idea that someone who's already a grown-ass man would somehow be put inside a demon's womb and delivered again. That just don't make sense, dude.

Who says he'd be grown? If he was killed his essence or a fragment of it would be put back into the womb, he'd be birthed and then he'd grow to full strength at a rapid rate, maybe assisted with magic, or maybe with his own power.

I'm not feelin' it, dude. Anything rapidly growing from child to adult is always dumb.

Valar morghulis, bitch! XD

But yeah, that'd be a bit too weird for MK.



To Razor: In your envisioning of the story, do you intend to have Shao Kahn be dead for good after MK3's story or do you prefer the idea of him returning later with much less power?

I'd like to have him die at the end of MK3. Unfortunately, Deadly Alliance's story somewhat requires him to be alive so that Quan and Shang can kill him again.

I will, however, have everyone THINK he's dead during MK4, since I've always liked the fact that in Gold, the Tomb and Church stages both had a sarcophagus that bore his likeness.

Well, it was just a thought.

In regards to Smoke, do plan on keeping the new enenra angle they gave him? Or is he going to be human and become automated through the cyber initiative?

I don't think I've ever made it a secret that A) the whole point of the project is to follow (and add to without contradicting) the original canon, and B) Cyber-Smoke is my jam, like in my top 5 favorite characters, but I've never liked the human version.

But the Enenra angle will totally appear in Deception as part of the explanation for why Noob taking him to Hell causes his nanobots to go wild and turn him into a smoke-monster.

Hi. I haven't posted on this site much, but I do visit regularly.

I am really excited by all the ideas you've had so far. I'd like to know what plans you have for the arenas in mk2. Are all the tournament matches going to be in Shao Kahn's arena? Where will Kitana kill Mileena? Thanks a lot. Please keep up the good work.

In MK:Unchained, Shao Khan's primary biography states that he uses a magical item retrieved by some minions a while ago to create a clone of himself to distract his enemies while he made his escape into the wild.

The problem with that bio is that it doesn't explain how he is still the Emperor of Outworld after going into hiding (losing/dying in MK:Trilogy), yet relaxing in his throne right in the intro to MK:DA.

Does his clone appear when Liu Kang "kills" him in MK:Trilogy or when the Deadly Alliance pays him a visit in Outworld?

Have you considered the possibility of switching up the timeline to accommodate fixing that plot-hole and have the Deadly Alliance capture Shao Khan instead of kill him? Shang Tsung did have him as a prisoner locked up deep underneath his Palace in a place called the "Dark Prison" as an Easter egg in MK:D's versus and arcade mode. I do know there a lot of appearances that are plain silly and clearly impossible, but Shao Khan's does kinda make sense if the arena was put into your MK:DA storyline instead of it's sequel. Having him locked up and tortured is something sinister I could see Shang Tsung doing as an act of revenge for banishing him to Earthrealm 500-odd years ago, threatening to have him executed for the death of Goro, and just being a straight-up dick as a person.

If you were to take that route, his clone being killed during MK:Trilogy makes more sense for his real self to be in Outworld during MK:DA then eventually MK:Unchained to retake his throne for the events in MK:Armageddon.

These are just ideas, let me know what ya think.

Aside from the whole cloning problem, who was the ruler of Outworld after the events of MK:Trilogy? Did Edenia merge with Outworld and Kitana rule the two realms as a whole?

Well I've already said Kahn and Goro will die for real in my version of DA, not fake it. The reason for that is precisely because I hate the clone stuff. Nothing involving the word "clone" is going to happen with Kahn in my version.

Also, Kahn is way too powerful for any dungeon or guards to ever hold, so...imprisoning him doesn't make sense for me.

He'll use a decoy to fight Liu in MK2, mind you. But that's not him faking his death. That's him distracting the heroes while he deals with Sindel's resurrection arrangements and shit. (Also, to explain why he turns to stone when you beat him in the original MK2.) As soon as the body turns to stone, nobody's going to go "We killed Kahn!", they're going to go "Oh crap, that wasn't Kahn, that was an animated statue. He's tricking us!"

As far as what was going on in Outworld between MK3 and MKDA, and "who was king if everyone thought Kahn was dead", well...

...You remember how, when Tobias was writer, Edenia and Outworld weren't two separate realms, they were the same one, which means Sindel and Kitana were ruling Outworld during MK4?

And then MKDA retconned it so that actually, Edenia was a merged world that the heroes unmerged, and Sindel and Kitana had been ruling THAT, since MK4, not Outworld.

Well that means that Kahn was king of Outworld that whole time. There was never any other ruler in that period, he was only "lying low" in the sense that he was sitting at home resting and getting his strength back, and people on Earth or in Edenia maybe ASSUMED he was dead, briefly, because they hadn't seen him since MK3 and Outworld was being quiet and not attacking them anymore.

It's not like MK3 ends with anyone able to see the body. It ends with Kahn and his castle disappearing from Earthrealm, being sent back to Outworld as the realms unmerged. So how would they know if he was dead or not?

They were just assuming, because it LOOKED like he was blowing up when he shot green soul-lasers out of his body.

Kahn's arena will host quite a few of the official tournament battles, but with so many characters roaming around between rounds, most of the plot is an opportunity to establish backstory for various areas, like when anyone arrives from Earth to Outworld, they're obviously going to first arrive at the Portal stage.

When Smoke is sneaking through Outworld, he'll be in the Living Forest and Jade will stop him for trespassing and they'll fight there (as a reference to them hiding behind the trees in the arcade game).

When Kitana is showing Liu how she found out her family is a lie, it'll be like "Here's the Evil Monastery. This is where the Shadow Priests live. The Flesh Pits where Shang made Mileena are in the basement." And thus there'll be fighting in the Tower stage as they explore the place.

As for where the big battle between Kitana and Mileena will happen, to be honest I haven't quite settled on that yet...do I want to have Mileena ambush them out in the wastelands as Kitana is meeting with Liu, do I want to have her wait until Kitana comes back to Kahn's castle and have her be like "I know what you've been up to and I'm telling dad" "Oh no you're not!", or some shit like that, I haven't really worked out the details of that one yet.

When you get to MK3, when the good guys finally make it back to Earthrealm in an attempt to stop Kahn's invasion, I know Kitana will come along with them, but during that time in Earthrealm, would she stay low and blend in with Earthrealm society. For example, would she change from her MK2 assassin outfit into some modern Earthrealm clothing (hoodie, jeans etc.) even though she never had any knowledge in Earthrealm culture? You'd probably think her MK2 clothes are going to attract some unwanted attemtion possibly some Outworld interlopers within Earthrealm hunting her down. I know it's probably out of her princess persona, but then again she definitely is no pushover... Also it seems of all the Tarkarta, Baraka appears to be the most intelligent of all unless you count Mileena, then he's screwed. To send a clone in place of him to a meeting where he knows Mileena will kill him takes a Machiavellian strategy and opened the opportunity for him to slay her in his MKD ending. So how can Baraka be somewhat intelligent in an otherwise brutish and dumb race. Was he educated by Outworld scholars or Shadow Priests? Was he just a genetic accident in the whole Tarkarta gene pool, inheriting his intelligence from a recessive gene? Also, if Baraka loves to serve the strongest in Outworld, where doesn't he take advantage of the power struggles and maneuver his intelligence to intensify the conflict between the Shokan and Centaurs so his race can be elevated. In fact how would the whole of Outworld react if a Tarkartan would take the throne of Outworld?

Following Kitana's MK3 bio, she actually gets captured at the end of 2 and put on trial for Mileena's murder.

She will then escape once the invasion has started and be wandering the streets trying to hide from Extermination Squads and shit.

In my head, it looks a lot like Kyle Reese's first scene in Terminator 1 where he's running through a closed shop at night, stealing clothes and ducking the cops.

As far as your Baraka question, he's not really much smarter than any other Tarkatan. He's in charge 'cause he's the best fighter. And frankly, no amount of political maneuvering would ever allow Tarkatans to outshine the insane physical strength and human-level intelligence of the subboss races.

What do you think is Hornbuckle's position? Is he another fighter?

One MUGEN interpretation has him as one of Onaga's priest (hence why he is seen with Blaze). That mugen one also gave him a run that is essentially a flying pelvic thrust.

Either way, he was just a rumor like Nimbus and you interpreted Nimbus quite well. So whatever you make him, he'll be amazing.

Hornbuckle being a Dragon King Priest is canon, it's mentioned in one of Blaze's bios that he was "ambushed on a bridge" when he was mind controlled and forced to guard the egg, so that's obviously a reference to the two of them being in the Pit II background.
Thing is, it's way too early to mention the Dragon King or suddenly cut away in the middle of MK2 to a scene that has notthing to do with the rest of the plot, so their appearance will probably be just a cameo, like characters will be crossing the pit and see them fighting on another bridge in the distance, and go "What do you suppose is going on over there?" "Hey, is that guy on fire?" And that'll be pretty much it. Just another supernatural curiosity of the Outworld environment for Earth folks like Johnny to freak out over.