Mortal Kombat has a long history of serious horror dialed up to the point of absurdity, as well as deliberate comedy. Whether it be the Fatalities that go a little too far without the technology to support them, or some characters that are just supposed to be weird, smelly monsters, Mortal Kombat has it all. This sendup to every classic kung-fu and monster movie has churned out plenty of stories and characters over the years, and while there are as many duds as there are classics, there’s also one other category: the absurd.
Johnny Cage may be a wisecracking Hollywood star, but even he’d be given pause at the sight of some of MK’s more bizarre fighters. These are all highly concentrated in Mortal Kombat’s much-maligned 3D era, where Netherrealm was willing to try any idea it had. That spirit is somewhat alive today with all the action movie, horror movie, and comic book guests, but that’s more due to surprise factor. While no one would describe MK as a series with too much grim dignity, it’s still a chuckle to see what even it tried to leave behind.
The strangest character in Mortal Kombat may be its most normal: Mokap. He is a regular mixed martial artist from Earthrealm, and has been hired by Johnny Cage to work on some of his movies. He fights in a blue and black motion capture outfit, a reference to the real life motion capture actor Carlos Pesina who has been working on the Mortal Kombat series since MK1. The main feature that sets him apart from the rest of the 3D MK cast is that instead of using a weapon, he has multiple stances focused on different martial arts. He may never return, but his spirit lives on in the games’ development and possibly in the new Mortal Kombat movie’s production as well.
Havik is another unique Mortal Kombat fighter, though he’s a lot more “special” than Mokap is. Havik is the series’ one and only Chaosrealm fighter, and represents his realm as its cleric. When Onaga the Dragon King surfaced in Mortal Kombat: Deception to bring order to all realms, Havik set out to put a stop to that. As Joker’s MK11 ending showed, he’s still at it somewhere in the multiverse. The bottom half of his face is skeletal, and he fights through contorting his body in impossible ways. He can even snap his own neck to regenerate health. Fans would love to see him make a return, though with the extent of his injuries in the Mortal Kombat X comics, it remains to be seen if he will.
When one is talking about Mortal Kombat being juvenile, they don’t need to look much farther than its history of ridiculous Fatalities. Personifying Mortal Kombat 4’s “flayed alive” variety of Fatalities, Meat started his life as a bonus skin for every character. He already served as the base bloody skeleton beneath every model, so players could just choose someone’s moveset and play them with Meat’s appearance. Armageddon gave him a minimalist “escaped experiment” backstory, and a mixed move pool including everything from wrestling moves to throwing parts of himself at enemies. He’s another unlikely candidate for future Mortal Kombat games, but will persist as a sort of lynchpin for the fourth chapter in the series’ history.
At the end of it all, some of Mortal Kombat’s characters are meant to be weird, smelly monsters for their own sake. The patron saint of these is Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance’s Drahmin. A masked oni from Netherrealm, Drahmin is trying to carve out his own comfortable niche by finding a nice, evil master who will facilitate his hobby of torturing souls and people. Drahmin is a fairly plain fighter, but his disgusting appearance stands out among the mostly human-looking cast, and he is constantly surrounded by flies that he can hurl at his opponent. That fighting style is already filled by the much more popular insect queen D’Vorah, but his appearance is unique enough that showing up in another Mortal Kombat as at least a costume would be appreciated.
Mortal Kombat 11 is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
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