Well the comic has the Shadow Priest telling Kahn that challenging again "goes against the Elder Gods' wishes", so presumably when he loses, that's them punishing him.

Of course, this was retconned by the fact that Kahn comes back in MK3. And Trilogy added to the canon a claim that the MK2 tournament was all a distraction anyway so that Raiden and the heroes wouldn't notice them rezzing Sindel on Earth.

So personally, if the turning to stone were to still be a thing that happened, I like the idea that it was because the Kahn you fight in MK2 is a fake, like he animated a statue and sent it out to keep Liu busy while tending to the resurrection ceremony or something...but that idea's pure fanfic.



Well Kahn has a line on the same page where he says "My strength grows, but this realm has ceased to grow with it. I need room for my powers to expand."

There's also the fact that, starting from MK3 and the movie on, it's established that Kahn is A) already immortal, and B) steals souls like Shang does...except he steals the souls of whole realms.

Also, the whole "when you win, you don't age until the next one" bit wasn't really clarified until the movie and later games either...although you could argue that it's implied in the "Great Kung Lao beats Shang, Shang is old when he comes back with Goro, Goro beats GKL" story from the MK1 comic.

Either way, I would presume that Tobias hadn't fully fleshed out what exactly about conquering Earth would give Kahn so much power...and later zeroed in on the idea that he'd consume the souls of the Earth's population and exceed the gods in power at that point.



"Immortal" is a word that confuses people easily, because sometimes it just means "doesn't age" and sometimes it means "can't be killed".

In Liu's case, I don't think it ever meant forever I think it just means "he's ageless for now".



I don't, really. In those old threads, I was just suggesting having someone else win MK2 to appease people whose main complaint about Liu was that "he wins all the time". It's not what my personal preference would have been. I like the way the original trilogy was structured, it's all one story and Liu keeps winning because he's the main character and he's supposed to be learning something and growing as a person with every big victory.

I presume that if someone else HAD won MK2, Liu would start aging again and the prize would transfer to the new champion when the Elder Gods shined their golden light down on him.

I like the animated stone statue idea, too; however, it kind of goes against the whole "this is a legit tournament that plays for keeps." It doesn't make sense because Shao Kahn initiated the challenge, therefore he has to partake in it. I guess he could ignore it and have it be retconned that he just abandoned it basically handing over his right to challenge by the end of MKII, but why would Shao Kahn just ignore any chance to legitimately be able to invade Earthrealm? That's why I wanted to hear more about your stone statue idea.

I guess what I was really asking, was, if MKII's tourny really /had/ a prize at all, since there was no reason to make the champ immortal; this was the last tournament betwee Outworld/ Kahn and Earthrealm, so there'd be no reason to immortalise the champion. However, it's said Liu Kang was the immortal champion of MK in 4; I've wondered if that was just a metaphorical sense, like, he will forever be immortalised as the hero who won both tournaments, or, he is ageless due to winning Kahn's tourny. Or, another idea is that he became immortal after MK3 after he helped defeat Kahn and it was like some of the endings of MK3 where "the elder gods award you with power" or whatever; I've always wondered if this was, in a sense, making Liu Kang the Elder Gods' enforcer so as to explain why Scorpion in Deception would be called that despite not having won a single MK tournament.

One reason I'm curious about this aspect is because if Liu Kang wasn't REALLY ageless, what exactly were the motivations for Kitana and Kang to hook up besides being opposites inspiring one-another?

That is a flaw in the idea, I admit.

I find it pretty likely that Kahn would grossly underestimate Liu's power, so perhaps he thought fighting a mortal from Earthrealm would be beneath him, that the proxy would have no problem winning?

And if the statue wins, no one will ever know it wasn't really Kahn, and if it loses, the tournament's over anyway so what're you gonna do, disqualify him for cheating? Take away his challenge privileges after he's already lost them because those were the stakes anyway?

Or maybe he had no choice, he was forced to rush the resurrection because they were nearly onto it? Kitana was feeding intel to the good guys the whole game, several MK3 bios establish that the heroes KNEW an invasion was coming before it even started and were trying to prepare ahead of time, and Raiden's MK2 bio even establishes right from the getgo, before the tourney being a distraction was ever retconned in, that he THINKS the tournament is some kind of ruse and attended specificially to keep an eye out for treachery.



Well Kahn isn't the only guy in the universe who wants to conquer realms. The possibility will always exist that the Mortal Kombat tournament will be a necessity again whether it's Outworld trying to claim Earth or not, and if that happens, the reigning champion remains active.

Defenders of the Realm actually briefly addressed this I think...like I remember a scene, perhaps in the Rain episode, where Liu is in fact asking something along the lines of "Well now that people are just invading all the time, what if we never have another tournament again and I'm just stuck living forever?" and Kitana is the one to console him.

So that was probably the situation as of MK4. I mean, that's also why he rejects Kitana's marriage proposal. He wants to be with her, but he can't move to Edenia JUST IN CASE there's ever another occasion where Earth is challenged and he has to defend the title.