Ah Mortal Kombat, oh how I’ve missed you so. Ever since I first laid my hands upon my friend’s Sega Genesis controller and beat the living daylights out of them I’ve been under your bloody, gore-filled spell. With the recent announcement that Mortal Kombat X is coming out, we here at CGMagazine have been excited to rip our friends and enemies’ heads off. Between ninjas, super cops, and inter-dimensional creatures, the rosters of Mortal Kombat are as vast as they are awesome. Without further adieu, here are our top five Mortal Kombat characters.
5. Johnny Cage
In videogames, every cast needs a cocky jerk archetype character. For Mortal Kombat, Johnny Cage is that jerk.
Johnny Cage has been the egotistical, narcissistic, overconfident, and yet loveable movie actor that finds himself in the Mortal Kombat tournament.
Cage was originally based off of Jean-Claude Van Damme when the first Mortal Kombat game was a movie tie-in for the movie Bloodsport and has appeared in almost every single Mortal Kombat game.
Most players will remember him from his comedic fatalities such as his Mortal Kombat 2 fatality where he uppercuts an opponent’s head off, and the proceeds to uppercut them twice more producing two more heads, as well as his abuse to an opponent’s testicles.
Overall, Johnny Cage is the comedic character in an otherwise straight-faced world and helps by adding a lighter contrast to the dark toned series.
4. Reptitle
Even though he’s one of many coloured ninjas in the Mortal Kombat franchise, Reptile is one of the best.
Although making his first playable appearance in Mortal Kombat 2, Reptile actually made his debut in the original. If players played on The Pit while shadows crossed the moon in the background, and got a double flawless victory without blocking and a fatality they’d then face Reptile, who at the time only had the moves of Scorpion and Sub-Zero rather than his own moves.
Even though he looked human in the original Mortal Kombat games, his special moves such as his acid spit and tongue grab fatality made it apparent that he was in fact an actual reptile who is also apparently a ninja.
Reptile was the start to the ongoing legacy of Ed Boon and John Tobias teasing and pulling pranks on the Mortal Kombat fan base. It also made the series infamous for hiding features, cameos, and characters in following iterations of Mortal Kombat which made gamers want to play more to uncover all of the hidden gems in the game.
Oh, and he can turn invisible, and that is pretty damn awesome.
3. Sonya Blade
The original femme fatal of the Mortal Kombat franchise is also one of the best characters in it.
Sonya is a member of the United States Special Forces and joins the original Mortal Kombat tournament to arrest the criminal Kano. Originally the rivalry with Kano was suppose to be with her partner Jax Briggs, but Boon and Tobias decided that it should be with Sonya instead, as there were no women in the original Mortal Kombat roster.
As Sonya appeared in more Mortal Kombat games, the more her backstory and motivations were fleshed out, and eventually became a strong female character, rather than the woman in the goofy spandex suit during her debut.
2. Sub-Zero
One of the two most iconic characters in the entire franchise and in fighting games is our second favourite Mortal Kombat character.
There have been two different people who have used the Sub-Zero name. The first was in the original Mortal Kombat, but was killed off by Scorpion. The younger brother of the original then took the name of Sub-Zero and has been ever since Mortal Kombat 2.
Much like his name suggests, Sub-Zero has the ability to manipulate ice and uses it to slow down and defeat his opponents. From shooting a ball of ice to freeze enemies, to creating a patch of ice on the ground to throw them off balance, he uses his powers in new ways each game and are incredibly fun and entertaining to use.
Even more iconic than his ice powers, his original fatality where he rips the head and spinal cord off an opponent is the most memorably fatality in the entire Mortal Kombat series. It was so brutal that the fatality alone helped to create the ESRB, and it had to be censored in some home console ports of the game.
1. Scorpion
The superior half of the original coloured ninjas is our number one Mortal Kombat character.
Scorpion was a powerful ninja before being assassinated by the original Sub-Zero, which led to the complete extinction of his clan. He was then reborn as a hate filled hellspawn who eliminated everyone in his way to exact revenge against Sub-Zero and anyone else who had a part in his clan’s downfall.
Being a hellspawn, Scorpion has a wide array of powerful and iconic moves at his disposal. His teleport attack allows him to disappear and quickly reappear behind an opponent, it has been a great way to mix up and counter opponent’s attacks.
His most iconic move however is his spear. He tosses it out from across the screen while yelling “GET OVER HERE!” Opponents unlucky enough to be hit by this get dragged toward Scorpion while stunned, leaving them open to combos.
Scorpion is the only character to appear in every Mortal Kombat game and is loved by fans all over the world. He was even the only Mortal Kombat character to appear in NetherRelm’s DC Comics fighting game Injustice: Gods Among Us.
He also helped to develop the Mortal Kombat brand from his catchphrase alone. Even if a gamer isn’t a fan of the series, or has never played it before, they’ll instantly know Scorpion and Mortal Kombat from just from hearing “GET OVER HERE,” which is something that no other character from the series has even come close to doing.
