Mortal Kombat 1 is now on its way, aiming to come out in September 2023. It’s going to reboot the franchise again, with classic characters taking on new roles with Liu Kang as the divine mentor to a mortal Raiden, and Scorpion & Sub-Zero possibly retaining the friendship they developed in Mortal Kombat X.
But some things will remain the same. Mortal Kombat wouldn’t be Mortal Kombat if the combat wasn’t mortal. The series has had bloody fatalities since 1992, and Mortal Kombat 1 will retain these deadly finishers. Once the series let this proverbial gory genie out of the bottle, other fighting games were quick to incorporate dramatic fatalities.
10 Killer Instinct
Once something becomes popular, it gains an entourage of imitators. Sonic the Hedgehog led to Bubsy, Alfred Chicken, Awesome Possum, and other furry platformers. Grand Theft Auto produced the True Crime series, and games based on The Godfather and Scarface. Mortal Kombat had some grim copycats, but if any of them was worth revisiting, it would be Killer Instinct.
Created by Rare and then-MK creators Midway, Killer Instinct gave its fancy, 3D-rendered cast two “No Mercy” moves each, and a “Humiliation” (a la MK’s “Friendships”) for yuks. The 2013 reboot largely got rid of them to focus more on the combo-heavy gameplay. But it would eventually add Ultimate Finishes, which replaced the gore with style.
9 Eternal Champions
Sega’s time-traveling brawler wasn’t exactly a balanced, Evo-quality fighter, yet it was solid enough to have some fun with. Despite its popularity and a pseudo-sequel, the series was shelved to make way for more Virtua Fighter entries.
Eternal Champions was ahead of its time in one way, as its fatalities were gorier than anything in the MK games at the time. The level of violence is more on par with the reboot trilogy 20 years later, as characters can be burnt at the stake, blasted to bits by a Tommy gun-wielding cinema clerk, or impaled on the Washington Monument.
8 Primal Rage
KI and Eternal Champions stood out from the pack of imitators for their style and gameplay. But Primal Rage stood out due to its bestial cast of characters. Taking place in a post-apocalyptic world, players picked one of seven beasts to pummel the paste out of each other for control of “Urth.” While it didn’t play fantastically, it looked pretty great for a 1994 arcade game.
It also courted controversy. In 1996, an Arizona mother caused a stink in the media when she saw one character melt his opponent with his acidic urine. Best Buy pulled it from the shelves and didn't put them back up until the ESRB re-evaluated them. Even then, they refused to restack the Genesis version unless the ESRB gave it an M-rating. They felt it was somehow more mature and violent, despite having the same content as the other ports.
7 Way Of The Warrior
Today, Naughty Dog is one of the industry's top dogs. They've made a host of classic games for nearly 30 years, from the PS1's de facto mascot Crash Bandicoot to the post-apocalyptic survival sim The Last of Us. Yet before all that fame, they made this MK knock-off for the 3DO. It had the gory moves and fatalities, but they weren't particularly well animated, and the character designs were odd (a dinosaur called "High Abbot").
It's not a good game, but it is an important one. Way of the Warrior was the first game ND founders Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin made (largely by themselves) as a career than as a hobby. 3DO gave them more creative control, which gave them more drive to stick to making video games. So, without this odd game with the White Zombie soundtrack, there'd be no Uncharted, Jak & Daxter, or Crash Team Racing.
6 Time Killers & BloodStorm
Made by Incredible Technologies, the people behind Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game, these two fighters aren’t technically related. Yet BloodStorm just inherited Time Killers' gameplay. On top of the gross fatalities, both allowed players to lop off their opponent's limbs if they were damaged enough.
Of the two, BloodStorm is the most notorious. Daniel Pesina, the original actor behind MK’s Johnny Cage and the ninjas, appeared in its advertising. Then, perhaps inspired by Entertainment Weekly calling it a Simpsons-like parody of MK in their 1994 review, the show featured the similarly named “BoneStorm” in the following year's season (“Buy me BoneStorm or go to hell!”).
5 Thrill Kill & Wu-Tang: Taste The Pain
Paradox Development’s 1-on-1-on-1-on-1 3D brawler Thrill Kill saw a host of hellish miscreants fight for the chance to be resurrected on Earth. The more they hit each other, the more their “Kill Meter” filled up. Once full, they could strike their opponent with a lethal finisher to take them out. However, the publishing rights were given to EA, who promptly canceled the game’s release.
Not to be dissuaded, Paradox reskinned it as Wu-Tang: Taste the Pain (or Shaolin Style) and locked its gore behind a code. The game wasn’t as bloody as Thrill Kill, but it still had dismemberment, decapitations, and more. It was just done with the GZA, the RZA, the Ghostface Killah, and more.
4 ClayFighter
MK is no stranger to parodies. Mikro Mortal Tennis aped its aesthetic for a standard tennis game. CD-i platformer The Apprentice had hidden "Nudalities." But the ClayFighter series went all-in on taking MK's gameplay to the extremes of silliness.
Across its three entries (and two updates), players could pick one of a range of claymation characters, then perform a “Claytality” at the end of the last round. While some could be brutal in a Celebrity Deathmatch kind of way, they were largely silly gags that aimed for the low-hanging fruit (e.g., Blob's Mike Tyson-inspired, ear-related Claytality).
3 Samurai Shodown
Japan has an odd relationship with gore in its games. CERO, their ESRB-equivalent, is stricter on dismemberment and blood, hence why their versions of No More Heroes and Ninja Gaiden are tamer than in the West. It's also why MK never made much headway there. But SNK managed to fit in some ultra-violence with their sword-slinging series Samurai Shodown.
Its slashes would show off the odd spray of claret, with the bloodiest moves being SamSho 4's Lightning Strikes. Then SamSho 5 would go one further by giving each character their own Overkill move, which could get as nasty as the classic MK fatalities. Samurai Shodown Sen would try to stick with them, giving everyone universal decapitation, bisection, and disarming techniques. But for the 2019 reboot, the series went back to the Lightning Strikes.
2 Guilty Gear & BlazBlue
MK isn’t as popular in the East as it is in the West, so SamSho’s shift into sudden death strikes was likely inspired more by ArcSystem Works’ fighters. The original Guilty Gear introduced them as special attacks that could instantly win the second round if the player got it to connect.
For its sequel Guilty Gear X, they were balanced out into a separate gauge the player had to activate. If they missed, they lost their meter for the rest of the round. BlazBlue continued the trend but locked its “Astral Finishes” behind a set of conditions a la MK’s Brutalities. As cool as they were, they were rarely seen due to their conditional execution, leading to their removal from Guilty Gear Strive.
1 SoulCalibur 4
SoulCalibur overtook SamSho as the world’s most popular weapons-based fighter thanks to its 3D graphics, gameplay, and fresh set of characters. That, and being quite bloodless for a cast armed with swords, spears, bladed whips, axes, and more. It was more friendly for all audiences, even if it was odd to see people shrug off getting impaled like it was no big deal.
By 2008, Bandai-Namco tried to spice SoulCalibur 4 by introducing “Critical Finishes.” If players hit their opponent with a Soul Crush, then hit L1/LB at the right time, they could instantly win the round with a flashy move. As cool as they looked, aping Guilty Gear's Instant Kills wasn't the shot in the arm the series needed. They were replaced with the Critical Edge super moves in the sequels.