No, before MK: Trilogy this rule was never explicitally stated, but the tornament held in 1992 was not the first.
Since the beginning, story writers told us of the existence of The Great Kung Lao some centuries ago, that Shang Tsung was defeated, then Goro killed Kung Lao in the following MK, etc...

So I Assume that a "single" victory in the MK canon was not enought to grant EarthRealm to Outworld.

"No, before MK: Trilogy this rule was never explicitally stated"

Yes, it was. That was the whole point of my post.

Have a look again:

This is a scan from the official "Mortal Kombat II" comic book, released in 1993:

http://i49.tinypic.com/a2bxif.png

This is what Sub-Zero says on that page (which is page 13):

"We thought maybe Goro won the tournament...You know the myths -- Ten wins in a row all hell is gonna come through a portal."

There you have it: The fact that Shang Tsung has to win 10 consecutive tournaments is stated long before the movie came out. And since this comic book was supposed to be canon (since it's an official comic book created by the designers of "Mortal Kombat"), that rule was part of the canon long before "Mortal Kombat Trilogy".

This thread is better suited for the Mortal Kombat Series General section of the forum and it will be moved there later today. Just letting you know in advance.



EDIT: Thread moved.

its for the realm protection against kahn created by elder gods along time ago. shang tsung actually had won 9 in a row before great kung lao then came goro's win streak.

so its been around way longer than the mk movie.

i do have a question though....does the tournament take place every 10 years or in another time frame?

a generation is 25 years, according to certain cultures.

So, making some quick math, I assume it is:

1992 tenth MK
1967
1942
1917
1892
1867 fifth MK
1842
1817
1792
1767 Goro's Victory
1742 Kung Lao's victory


But, according to other dating systems, a generation is made out of 50 years, so it will become something like that:

1992 tenth MK, last chance to save EarthRealm
1942
1892
1842
1792
1742 fifth
1692
1642
1592
1542
1492 Kung Lao's Victory


So, I assume that a Tournament is Held every 50 years. Kung Lao lived in the lade Middle Age, and officially the Middle Age ends with the discovery of America by Italian sailor Cristoforo Colombo (Cristopher Colombus) in 1492.
Funny thing that Kung Lao won the same year of America's discovery.

dang!! its takes along time to conquer a realm. lol i see why kahn is mad as hell.

thanks

We should know by now that the writers of the story for this game have no idea what they've written in the past. Such inaccuracies occur in almost every single game, it should be obvious by now that these guys lose track of what they've put in.

The ten tournaments rule was indeed established by the MK2 comic, which came out before the movie was even in production.

And yes, a "generation" in MK tournament terms is 50 years. This is actually said out loud in Deception Konquest by one of the NPCs (The White Lotus recruiter in Earthrealm, if you want to look for it). But even if it hadn't been, you could figure it out yourself with math like lastfighter did. If Goro beat GKL ten tournaments ago, and that was 500 years ago, well gee, what's 500 divided by 10, eh?

Boon and Tobias were heavily involved as consultants on the first movie. A lot of the lore stuff, Kasanoff actually wanted to be loyal to the games with. People forget that a lot.
Even Kitana and Liu having a romance was actually a Tobias invention, not something the movie did first. If you look at the MK1 pre-production notes he posted on Twitter a while back, you can see that originally, Kitana was going to be an NPC in MK1 named "Kitsune", and she would've been Liu's love interest and the daughter of Shang Tsung, a reference to Han's daughters from Enter the Dragon. And hints of her connection to Liu are present in her MK2 bio referencing her secret meetings with an unnamed Earth warrior, and again with her appearing in his MK3 ending to thank him for helping free Edenia. So the whole asking him to marry her thing in MK4 really isn't as out-of-nowhere or as stolen from the film as people tend to think, Tobias had it in his head that these two were growing close behind the scenes all along.
Really, the ONLY things the movie invented all on its own that the games adopted were Kano's accent and Raiden having long silver hair. That's it.

You forgot Raiden and Shao Kahn being siblings (a reference made also in Raiden's bio in MK vs DCU, I wonder why) in MK: Annihiliation and the whole "Animality" thing. But hey, MK Annihiliation never happened, I must be high or something.

I wasn't counting Annihilation because it was a completely different production from the first movie, different writer, different director, no Boon/Tobias input, etc. It had very little of the games in it and the games borrowed nothing from it either, so there's no point in including it in the conversation.

in the first movie when liu kang goes back to the order of light temple, i hear one of the monks say

"liu kang has been given the dream, he is the chosen one".


so is this part of the tournament where the fighters are given dreams if they are chosen to fight in the tournament or just in the movie??

Liu's never called "The Chosen One" in the games. And Shang Tsung never killed his brother so no, there's no dreams in the canon.

He is acknowledged to be a better fighter than everybody else a few times throughout the games...but it's more in the sense of "Well he's the champion and he won two tournaments in a row, so of course Kahn considers him the biggest threat", they never actually explain what it is that makes him so powerful beyond just being very spiritually strong, or why for example Kung Lao constantly fails to beat the same big bads Liu has, when the two of them don't seem to be much different.
If he were "the chosen one", that would mean that, y'know, somebody chose him to beat Outworld, like, deliberately gave him the ability to do so. Especially if there were visions or dreams involved, that's someone trying to send him a message about what he needs to do. Like the Elder Gods made it his destiny to beat Shao Kahn. (The weird thing is, in the movie, it seems like Shang himself sent Liu the dream message because he talks right to Liu and says "you will be next" while showing him his brother's death, but then the monks act like the dream is a sign from a GOOD power that Liu is meant to fight in the tournament and save the world.)
Some of us speculate at times that he gets his powers from the Elder Gods somehow, because they look like the MK logo dragon and so do his fireballs and Animality...but that's all it is, speculation. The Elder Gods don't really interfere like that, at least not on purpose, they don't care which side wins the tournaments as long as the rules are followed. Maybe Liu is just able to imitate their power for some reason, or his strength comes from his own faith, or maybe one of his ancestors was a god...though I hope not because it works for Sub-Zero and Rain and I'm kinda okay with it for Cage, but it would get really repetitive if too many more characters got their powers from having magic grandparents, lol.
The closest thing to being "chosen one" in the games would be in MK9, his bio says that Raiden personally picked him out to receive the best training because he could tell he was the best fighter the monks had.

MK vs DCU borrowed the "Raiden/Shao kahn are borthers" thing, although MK vs DCU is not canon, but after MK9 is hard to tell what is official or not.

Btw, about the whole "Liu Kang is the chosen one" thing, I've read Tobias' comic book and Liu Kang simply candidates himself on his own volition.
There's no part where he is picked up by someone, or received a special training or has special abilities. He claims to win the tournament and I see no opposition from the other monks.

The same goes for Raiden; at start he was not involved in the whole EarthRealm suvival process, then he became the God of Thunder AND protector of Earth, all of a sudden, mentor of the Heroes.

I think the Mortal Kombat story is full of retcons. Good or bad, the New MK9 storyline solved few mysteries (The death of Johnny Cage, Kuai Liang role in the tournament, how Smoke got kidnapped and turned into a cyborg and what was doing in the living forest, etc) and gave a terrible but linear and sensed plot. Now we know how all things went and there's no more danger of "interpretation".

I hope that there will be no more retcons too, they kill the story.

To be fair, Tobias has said and shown with the concept art he put up on Twitter that he intended Raiden to be a "mentor" character from the beginning, he just didn't have enough text space in the bios to put in things like that in the first couple games. That's why some of the "retcons" we saw in the early games were necessary. He had the ability to add more and more information and depth with each game.

And for the record, a retcon is when you contradict what was already said. Just plain adding more info isn't a retcon if it fits in well with the existing canon. And the only thing Raiden being a protector of Earth contradicts is his MK1 ending which was never canon anyway, it was a joke, that's why it ends in "Have a nice day."

MK9, on the other hand, is littered with retcons. For example, Mileena's introduction directly contradicts her and Kitana's MK2 backstories, both Sub-Zeros are given completely different reasons for attending the tournament than what they originally were (The Sub-Zero bros' origin story was also altered, saying they were abducted from both parents, whereas Mythologies specifically said their father was a clan member and he took them from just their mother and made them join), and Sindel's reason for committing suicide and why her resurrection on Earth allows Kahn to invade have been changed.
Oh, and then there's my favorite: a previous game's entire plot REVOLVED around the fact that Quan Chi absolutely does not know how to suck souls out of people. The whole reason he teamed up with Shang Tsung in Deadly Alliance was because only Shang could do that FOR him. And yet in MK9, we see him make a big ol' tornado of souls by stealing 'em from those tied up soldiers. (By the way, where did the REST of the souls in that soulnado come from? It got big real fuckin' fast. The soldiers were used to start it, but they alone aren't enough to account for how many souls were in it. So are the rest supposed to have been sucked out of the graves in the graveyard? Because that doesn't make any fuckin' sense. Your soul doesn't get buried with you, it goes to Heaven or Hell. It was real fuckin' simple in the original MK3, there was no fucking tornado made with dead people, Shao Kahn just plain sucked the souls out of everyone in the city, and then the entire world, at the start of the merger. There's a whole montage of pictures showing this shit in the arcade game! Why would you fucking change that? In fact, NOTHING in those pictures happens in MK9! WHY? Why would you ignore an entire opening cinema full of non-vague, non-mysterious, clear and concrete information?)
If that's the way things are done now then you can be sure the retcons won't stop any time soon and plenty of stuff from MK4, Deadly Alliance, Deception, and Armageddon will be changed by future games too.

why do you guys say the elder gods dont care about the tournament? i mean if shao kahn wins against every realm wouldnt he eventually merge all the realms to outworld making it the one being again WHO the elder gods HATE. isnt the one being controlling shao kahn and onanga to do that anyway?

so how could the elder gods not care about the tournaments??



Also, quan chi did make a soulando in mkda for shang to have endless supply of souls. i think it says someting about his amulet open the gateway to heaven.... i never saw him soul suck before though.



raiden is good as a mentor it just seems they make him the main character when it suppose to be MORTAL kombat.

I don't know which MK9 Story Mode you saw, but I've never seen Quan Chi sucking the soul out of someone in that game.
He simply opened the soulnado, a thing that he already did in MK: DA.
And the souls of the heroes were given to him BY Shao Kahn, after all Quan Chi is a Necromancer (necromancy= magic of death/dead) so it makes sense that he is able to resurrect and control resurrected bodies.

The only change that has been made is that Shang Tsung and the Shadow Priests no longer resurrect Sindel, but it makes sense, since Shang Tsung is NOT a necromancer but a soul-eater and shapeshifter (at least in the old canon games he never resurrected anyone on his own).

The soldiers you mentioned are not killed because sucked of a sould, but they are consumed by the soulnado.
In MK: DA, If you remember correctly, Scorpion was thrown in there by Moloch and Drahmin, which means that the Soulnado itself is dagerous, not only for the "hellish" soul of Scorpion.
So the soldier were killed by the Soulnado itself, not because Quan Chi stole their souls.
The Soulnado itself, at least the way is explained in MK: DA is a portal to Beyond the Grave/Heavens, so it is a infinite mass of Souls. Quan Chi can open the Soulnado, but cannot absorb its souls and in MK9 he never absorbs anyone's soul. NEVER.

In the intro of MK3 no Soulnado is mentioned, although Shao Kahn simply stole the souls of 6/7 billions people, exluding the Chosen Warriors. How is that, considering that the rules forbid him to invade Earth? Ah, yeah, It doesn't make sense, at all.
IN MK9 we saw how Shao Kahn ACTUALLY WANTED TO CHALLENGE the Elder Gods and the easiest way to absorb 6/7 billion of souls was the Soulnado, but Nightwolf stopped it.


IN MK9' Story Mode there are huge mistakes, like Mileena's past, the very origins of both SUb-Zeroes (does change a thing the fact that their father abducted them, instead or taking them away from their mother? Is that reaaaally an important change?)...but at least is a LINEAR story, you can clearly see the role of each and every character involved.
Better technologies allowed NRS Team to give more "spectacular" visual effects, so rather that watching few souls fly away from Earth, they picked up the "Soulnado" option because it's more spectacular and eye-catching.

And the classic story was full of problems too...Johnny Cage killed because they couldn't find a proper actor to replace Daniel Pesina, Shinnok not even able to recognize his OWN Amulet from a copy, Noob Saibot's and Mileena's sabotage of Shao Kahn's Plan going unnoticed, Kung Lao faking his death after being kicked in the butts but Shao Kahn, Mavado sento to kill both Kabal and Kenshi and of corse he fails in both missions like a dumb, the whole Armageddon mess and I can go on for the rest of time.

MK9 is just a new chance, because it is a new beginning, it has nothing to do with the past game. Perhaps it's a blasfemy, but I'm more intrigued by Shinnok's return THIS TIME, when Earth is without its Heroes, Raiden is deperate, rather than the rainbow, butterflies and flowers attitude of the first "version" of MK4 and Mythologies, where a simple Lin Kuei defeated 4 elemental gods and Shinnok/Quan Chi all alone (ok, maybe with Sareena's help, but you got the basic idea), Johnny Cage got resurrected just because the 1995 movie was a huge hit, a jobber like Kai is able to save a god from demons, Tanya and Jarek being rip-offs of someone else, Stryker and Kabal disappearing for no reason, etc.

The Elder Gods care only of themselves. Their only purpose is to maintain THEIR power and balance in the Universe. Of course they have a sense of Right and have simpathy for certain species/Realms in the Universe, that's why they gave to each Realm a protector God.
The problem is : The Elder Gods cannot interfere with the life of mortal beings, because they were afraid of triggering a rain of consequences that could bring to the return of the One Being.
That's what the original canon say.

The One being controlled Shao Kahn ONLY during MK Armageddon, or AFTER he won against Raiden. IN MK: Deception/Unchained The OB controlled Onaga, perhaps he is still controlling him in Armageddon.

However Shao Kahn WILL never merge all the Realms of the Universe becoming a "new" One Being, just because the Elder Gods would stop him, that's why they created the Mortal Kombat in the first place.
And I don't see Shao Kahn conquering Chaos Realm or Seido. IN MK Deception a small group of Seidan soldier was able to erase a whole Tarkatan army and Mileena, taking control of Lei Chen and making it a Seidan colony in Outworld.

The tournament were just a CHANCE to save a Realm. If its citizens failed to save their own lands, then they deserved to be conquered, thus the Elder Gods would not interfere at all because they gave 'em the possibility to fight back clean and draw.

Again, Quan Chi never sucked the soul out of someone, maybe he did something similar in his ending of MK9, but there is a 99% of chances that his ending in that game will be forgotten starting from the next game because un-canon.

Yes, the soulnado in MKDA was him opening a portal to Heaven and the souls that live in Heaven came pouring out. He did not make any souls come out of any bodies because he very distinctly cannot do that, only Shao Kahn and Shang Tsung know how to steal souls from the living.

It doesn't matter if he fucking absorbs them into himself or not. That's not what he wanted to do in Deadly Alliance either. He wanted to suck them out of people and then put them into mummies so the mummies would come back to life and he'd have an army. BUT HE COULDN'T BECAUSE HE DOESN'T HAVE THAT POWER. So he had to team up with Shang because Shang DOES have the power to pull the soul out of one thing and put it into another thing.

And what is Quan doing when he makes the Soulnado in MK9? HE'S PULLING THE SOULS OUT OF THOSE SOLDIERS TO START THE TORNADO, WHICH HE'S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE ABLE TO DO.

You cannot claim the Soulnado in MK9 works the same as the one in MKDA.

The one in MKDA was a PORTAL. A portal from a place full of souls to Outworld. So souls came pouring out.

If the one in MK9 were a portal...where the fuck does it lead to? From Earth to Outworld? THEN WHERE ARE THE SOULS COMING FROM?! Graveyards do not contain souls! Only Heaven, Hell, and living people do!


You can't call it a fresh start if you put fucking time travel in the beginning of your game, that's not how making sense works.

We saw Future-Raiden's memory. It was full of a whole montage of scenes that happened in MKDA, Deception, and Armageddon. That's NOT how you make a reboot, that's how you make a fucking SEQUEL.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqAymmIUxgE


Tell me WHEN Quan Chi sucks the souls out of the soldiers.
He just consumed the BODIES of the soldiers to open the Soulnado, he didn't absorb the souls out of anyone.
Again, Quan Chi is never seen drawing the soul out of someone in MK9.

If you want me to pinpoint it down to the second, I'd say it's at about 0:19.

Y'know, the point where streams of green fucking energy are pouring out of their bodies towards the god damned sky. If you look close enough, you can see one coming out of the dude in front's mouth and it looks exactly like the streams that pour out of Shang's eyes and mouth when Kahn kills him and Kitana's eyes and mouth when Sindel kills her.

Also Raiden's vision and Nightwolf's warning to Cyber-Sub TELL us that the soulnado will SUCK souls out of LIVING people if they get too close to it and that if they hadn't stopped it, it would have eventually covered all of New York City. It's NOT a portal to a place full of souls that will pour out like the one in MKDA. It is a soul stealing spell that grows bigger and bigger over time. Which is the very thing Quan Chi is not supposed to be capable of.

The thing Quan Chi doesn't know how to do in MKDA is SUCK them OUT of people. What you DO with the souls, whether you absorb them or not, has NOTHING to do with it. He can't pull them out of a person's body in the FIRST PLACE. And yet that's what we see and are told that the Soulnado that Quan Chi made in MK9 is supposed to do to people, suck your soul out of your body and send it to Shao Kahn.

(Note that the Soulnado Scorpion was thrown into in MKDA was NOT going to suck out his soul. It was going to rip his body apart or carry him to Heaven which would have destroyed him because he's a Hellspawn.)

Now seriously, where do YOU think all the goddamn souls in the soulnado are coming from? Explain THAT one single thing to me in ANY way that could POSSIBLY make sense. And I will remind you again that buried corpses in graveyards DO NOT HAVE SOULS IN THEM.

iN THE VIDEO i'VE POSTED YOU CAN CLEARLY SEE THE SOLDIERS consuming. usually, after someone sucks the soul the body does not disappear.
Sindel never stole Kitana's soul, not even tried to. The purple thing from her mouth are her screamer/banshee powers consuming Kitana from the inside, thus killing her.

The soulnado is not portal because it was never supposed to be one. IN MK DA it appear in all his dark splendor in the intro, and it's not a portal, it's a tornado made out of souls, and the same goes in MK9.

They simply changed the way Shao Kahn absorbed the souls of humankind; in MK3 the souls flied to the sky, in MK9 John Vogel or someone opted for the Soulnado, more appealing visually.

Quan Chi NEVER sucks the soul out of someone. Even at 0:19 mark I don't see any soul, it's just green energy floating to the sky like a Tornado. Quan Chi sacrified the soldiers in order to START the Soulnado, not feeding it or himself like Shang Tsung.

There are several Fatalities where Shang Tsung steal someone's soul and usually the body does not disappear,maybe it's banged up like greeny skeleton mass or a pale Skin, but the body is always there.
Shang tsung disappeared because his entire existence was due the bond with Shao Kahn, but the soldier didn't have any bond with Shao Kahn, Quan Chi or anyone else. They body were just consumedm destroyed and Quan Chi has never extrapolated their soul. The same goes for Sindel.

You are being deliberately dense. (Also, that bit about Sindel killing Kitana with screaming powers from the inside out is just you making things up in your own head.)

The soulnado in MKDA is coming out of a hole in the floor of Shang's palace. That HOLE is the portal to Heaven that the souls are coming from.

It's fucking explained in Shang and Quan's bios and Konquest modes.

In fact, I'll fucking quote some text straight from the game:

"Quan Chi had discovered that the amulet he stole from the Elder God, Shinnok, was in fact a key to manipulate inter-realm portals. Quan Chi pledged to unlock a portal to The Heavens to allow Shang Tsung to feed from the limitless souls of that realm. In return, Shang Tsung agreed to transplant the souls of defeated warriors into the mummified remains of the Dragon King's army. With a handshake to seal the unholy pact, the Deadly Alliance was formed."
Other parts in the game go on to explain that the amulet can only open up portals that have been built in specific places, shaped like giant Shinnok's Amulets. You can see him activate one in the opening cinema, and there's another in the background in the Dragon King's Tomb stage.

See it back there?
Quan and Shang enslave Li Mei's village and use them as slaves to build Shang's MKDA Palace over top of one of these big amulet-portals, hence the hole in the floor that the soulnado comes out of.

Now that that's settled, since you didn't answer this question, I ask it again:

In MK9, WHERE are the souls in the Soulnado coming from?

Quan Chi had Shinnok Amulet in both games, and used it to open the soulnado.
The Soulnado starts from the soldiers, but NOT because Quan Chi stole their soul, he simply sacrified them...their bodies, which is a different account. The souls poured from the dead bodies, or better, from the dying soldiers. No dead body is left on the scene. And I have already written it.

Souls in the MK canon are green, never saw a Purple soul.
What a coincidende that Sindel's banshee powers are purple too!
And in MK: Shaolin Monks intro Shang Tsung partially sucked Liu's soul, before the latter being saved by Kung Lao.
So I assume nobody dies if their soul has been consumed "partially", only the whole process kills a person. Nightwolf stopped Sindel, that's why Kitana survived, albeit for few minutes. And she died due to Sindel's powers, not because she lost her soul.
Her soul (as well the others') was taken by Shao Kahn in a later moment (off screen) and given to Quan Chi.
In the whole game there's no soul stealing, except for the death of Shang Tsung scene.

idk its really close.....soldiers could be being ripped apart by the soulnado.

how did quan chi ressurect sindel if dead bodies dont contain souls. i guess he put a new one in her......maybe he did something like that to create the soulnado......


the amulet is supposed to enhance all your powers and make you really powerful, so i have a hard time seeing that quan couldnt learn shang sung soul steal even though it might time.........