Putting the K on Kombat is what made Shinnok a Fallen Elder God.

LOL

In the Latin-based orthographies of many European languages (including English), a distinction between hard and soft ‹c› occurs in which ‹c› represents two distinct phonemes. The sound of a hard ‹c› (which often precedes the non-front vowels ‹a›, ‹o› and ‹u›) is always [k] (as in car) while the sound of a soft ‹c› (typically before ‹e›, ‹i› and ‹y›), depending on language, may be a fricative or affricate. In English, the sound of soft ‹c› is /s/ as in cent).

Sometimes ‹k› replaces ‹c›, ‹ck›, or ‹qu› in product names (e.g. Kool-Aid, Nesquik). Similarly, the hard ‹c› is frequently replaced by a ‹k›, as in the MORTAL KOMBAT franchise. Further use of ‹k› is found as a trope for giving words a hard-edged or whimsical feel. Such as singer Akon's 2006-release album Konvicted. More intensely, this use of ‹k› has also been used to give extreme right-wing or racist connotations. Examples include Amerika or Amerikkka (where the ‹k› is reminiscent of German and the totalitarian Nazi regime as well as the racist Ku Klux Klan).


Ed Boon stated for six out of the eight months while they were in production of Mortal Kombat, "...nobody could come up with a name nobody didn't hate." Some of the names suggested were Kumite, Dragon Attack, Death Blow, and even at one point, Fatality. Someone had written down "combat" on the drawing board for the names in Ed Boon's office and someone wrote a K over the C, according to Ed Boon, "...just to be kind of weird..." Steve Ritchie, a pinball designer at that time, was sitting in Ed Boon's office and saw the word "Kombat" and said to Ed Boon, 'Why don't you name it Mortal Kombat?' and according to Ed Boon, that name "just stuck."[25]

The series itself commonly uses the letter "K" in place of "C" for words containing the hard C sound, thus misspelling them. According to an interview with CraveOnline, Ed Boon stated that during game development they usually spell the words correctly and change them later when the developers recognize an opportunity.[26]

....from wikipedia *I never viewed/questioned why the characters in the game replaced a c with a k*....and shouldn't this be in General MK?

Bekause a K is a whole lot kooler and harder than a C.

ya, or that ^^ ..... it'd be hard to imagine a Mortal Combat

Immortals are not allowed to enter.

Raiden had to transform himself into a mortal body that could be killed in order to sign up, and though Scorpion is undead, he's been "reincarnated" into a fleshy body that, like Raiden, also can be killed as easily as anyone else.
Also, the tournament is run by a guy who cheats and changes rules a lot. Neither probably would've been allowed in back when the Shaolin Temple ran the tournament.