Mortal Kombat/Fridge

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Fridge Logic

  • In MK9, when Raiden goes to the Netherrealm to strike a deal with Quan Chi, the sorcerer reveals that he has dominion over the fallen heroes' souls. Among the lineup of characters is Cyber Sub-Zero. Since it is just Sub-Zero's soul (his body should still be in Earthrealm), shouldn't he be depicted as his human self? Similarly, shouldn't Jax be missing his cybernetic arms?
    • For Jax it's possible the soul takes a form based on the body when they pass on. As for Cyber Sub-Zero it's possible his soul didn't leave like Smoke in the original time line, and his soul took on the cyborg form when it finally passed on.
      • Considering his soul came back for a Heel Face Turn, Cyber Sub-Zero is definitely not like Cyber Smoke. As for why his soul took the cyborg form, my guess is that he came to terms with his new self before death, so his soul changed to signify that. Probably the same thing for Jax.
  • Why does Quan Chi have his tattoos in Shaolin Monks, MK9, and MKVsDCU? All three of those games are set before MK4, and he doesn't get the tattoos until before Deadly Alliance, whilst trapped in the Netherrealm after MK4.
    • Well, something also came to me about Quan Chi and your insight into his tattoos makes it seem more likely. Think how did Raiden transfer his thoughts to the past? Through his amulet. Now considering that Quan Chi has the amulet of Shinnok, a more powerful god than Raiden it is highly possible he did something similar and is paving his way to power by manipulating events with a clearer understanding of the future. He even throws in a quip about being a deadly alliance with Shang Tsung in story mode although it was likely just an in-joke.
    • Either that or Shinnok himself pulled a Raiden (the real Shinnok survived the events of Armageddon alongside Shao Kahn. Taven, and Liu Kang's spirit; the one ingame was confirmed to be a clone).
  • A major part of Bo' Rai Cho's background is that he would easily be able to fight in a Mortal Kombat tournament, but doesn't because he's from Outworld and, if he wins, he would be allowing Outworld to get closer to conquering Earthrealm, which he doesn't want. Okay, that works. But Shang Tsung is from Earthrealm and serves Shao Kahn, so if he wins a tournament, he'd be preventing his master from invading Earthrealm like he wants to. In the first game, he's obviously counting on Goro winning, but in the second one, he's in by himself and has no excuse.
    • Not as hard as you think. Shang Tsung is from Earthrealm, but is a resident of Outworld and a servant of Outworld's emperor. He fights for where he's living. Bo'Rai Cho, unfortunately, lives in Outworld. My theory does create the fridge logic of why Bo' didn't just side with Earth, though, or if he's living on Earth why he didn't fight...
      • Bo doesn't even live in Outworld. If memory serves, in Deception's Konquest mode he trains Shujinko in Earthrealm, and he was probably on Earthrealm if he trained Liu Kang prior to the first game.
      • Shang Tsung is a weird one, he can't be easily compared to Bo Rai Cho. For starters, Shang Tsung essentially had his soul bound to Shao Kahn himself, so spiritually became Shao Kahn's puppet. Meaning that his victories would automatically go towards the master who he is spirutally bound to, and is a puppet of. It's explained with dark magic, when Shang Tsung first took control of the tournament, and when reappearing as an old man after having been seen young prior before, he was essentially "renewed" by Outworld, thus his victories go towards his new, adopted realm. Second of all, that he's absorbed the souls of many warriors over a thousand years, from different realm origins, possibly negated his Earthrealm identification in regards to the tournament victories. Thirdly, and this is just a guess, but with the Elder God's intervening, the same one that presented Shang Tsung with the curse to consume souls for youth maintenance in the first place, it effectively meant Shang Tsung was denied Earthrealm identification for his treachery. With the Elder God's intervention, as well as his soul being spiritually tied to Shao Kahn, I believe it made Shang Tsung 'realmless' in a sense, not actually having a defined realm to belong in, I think that's part of his status as free roaming sorcerer.
      • Wasn't Rain fighting on the side of Shao Kahn during the events of the third game? Now, his heritage and birthrealm is Edenia, but yet his victories went towards Outworld, because he pledged his allegiance to Shao Kahn (and consequently Outworld). And, he betrayed his realm of Edenia, so surely that would deny him Edenian indentification, almost like being exiled. I imagine Shang Tsung follows the same course. Bo Rai Cho could have fought for Earthrealm as his adoptive home, he'd just need to be exiled from Outworld and denied identification from it. This didn't happen, he just left of his own accord as far as I know. Nothing more was done.
        • Edenia was still merged with Outworld during the events of the third game so Rain's realm is, technically, Outworld during that period. Kitana then got him to turn on Kahn for a while, until he learned of his true origins and decided to rule Edenia himself.
      • No wonder Outworld was able to conquer other realms so easily. Other realms willingly exile traitors from having the realm identification, meaning they lose numbers, and the victories of Shao Kahn's forces end up going to Outworld as their new adopted realm. I guess that's why Outworld seemed to have ridiculous amount of victories after all. Outworld would basically never exile fighters from it's realm, because obviously they'd gain a new realm identification in their new adopted realm, and suddenly they could compete in tournaments to assist Outworld's enemies, giving the invaded realms a better defence.
  • How did Kitana go 10,000 years without noticing her twin sister has tarkatan features?
    • MK 9 shows Milleena being created during the events of MK 1.
      • That's a retcon; before 9 she was established as being created when Shao Kahn took over Edenia and was raised as Kitana's sister.
    • Who's to say she didn't know? Kitana was evil all the way up until the end of MK 2. She probably didn't really care.
      • Kitana discovered the truth about Mileena, and her past before MK 2 began, it's why she turns against the Emperor and was helping Earthrealm. Mileena catches her in the act and that's why she was finally allowed to attack Kitana.
  • Movie example: it's assumed that during their fight, Scorpion teleported Cage into the Netherrealm. All right. Cage defeats Scorpion, whose head explodes, a Mythology Gag to MKII is made, and the scene ends. Next time we see Cage, he's back on Tsung's island, with no mention of how he escaped from Hell.
  • How does ANYONE with a tarkatan mouth speak perfect, unmangled English?
  • How exactly can Kung Lao be the reincarnation of the Great Kung Lao when a major plot point of MK 4 and Mythologies: Sub-Zero was that Shang Tsung had absorbed the Great Kung Lao's soul, meaning it wouldn't be available to be reincarnated?

Fridge Brilliance

  • Earlier today, I was pondering the Xanatos Roulette in Mortal Kombat Armageddon. It has a spot under What an Idiot! because it was revealed that the Mortal Kombat Tournament would lead to the end of the world as the realms' most powerful warriors grew in number and strength, yet the Elder Gods let it continue. I could see where they were coming from, but I wanted to justify why the Elder Gods wouldn't halt the tournament. With one grand realization, I finally have a theory. Several things have been implied: Armageddon is likely the reawakening of the One Being, an event that would destroy all realms. It has also been implied that this nearly happened in Deception when Onaga nearly fused the Kamidogu. It has also been implied that the reason for the tournament's inter-realm existence was because of the Elder Gods attempting to slow Kahn's konquest of the realms -- ten tournaments spanning ten generations makes for a lot of time. Without the tournament, Kahn and his army could simply march in and complete a direct konquest, which isn't that hard for them. Therefore, by not halting the tournament, the Elder Gods actually protect the realms for a longer time by choosing the lesser of two evils until a true solution can be found.
    • Actually, it is revealed in MK 9 that simply walking in and taking a realm is all gravy with the realms; it's the merging that is forbidden. So, it is to prevent the One Being from re-awakening, but raises the question of why bother merging the realms in the first place, if you can just take 'em.
  • So. About Mortal Kombat 4. The story goes that long before the games even began, the Elder God Shinnok betrayed his fellow Elder Gods and attempted to usurp them, thus gaining power over all realms, a plot he reattempts in the actual game. Does this sound familiar? If you've heard the story of Satan's origin even once, it should. Shinnok is the Satan of Mortal Kombat! (Made even more interesting by the fact that he overthrows Lucifer to become ruler of the Netherrealm!)
    • Another interesting Mortal Kombat discovery is that Raiden, the protector of Earthrealm, is the God of Lightning and Thunder. In Mortal Kombat Mythologies, and Mortal Kombat 4, we are introduced to a friend of his, Fujin, the Earthrealm God of Wind, however lower down in the hierarchy to our thunder god protector. When Raiden is apparently promoted to Elder God, Fujin the God of Wind becomes Earthrealm's new protector. However after Mortal Kombat 4, in Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance, Fujin is pretty much discarded as a character totally, and suddenly Raiden denies his position as an Elder God so he can return as Earthrealm's protector and gain a physical body. So where's the fridge discovery? Well for a while I was bothred with how Fujin was just Put on a Bus, but now it makes sense. Fujin is wind, Raiden is lightning. Look at the elemental triangles, that balance power within most franchises. Wind obviously resembles flight and birds, lightning is obviously electric. Electric is usually super effective against things associated with wind. It's likely the creators were using underlining elemental logic to illustrate how superior Raiden really is, possibly why Fujin was the god ally likely brought into MK4.
      • WTF?
      • or it could be that Fujin is the protector of Earth Realm, the Deadly Alliance was in Outworld. Fujin didn't interfere because it was outside his jurisdiction.
        • As a matter of fact, Fujin WAS going to be the lead character of MK Deadly Alliance. But fans complained, so we got Raiden instead.
  • Shang Tsung's iconic Soul Steal fatality in MK3 was very different from the one he used in MK2: rather than drain the victim's soul directly into himself, he levitates the victim and the soul flies away, unabsorbed. The reason for the change isn't apparent... until you remember that in MK3, Shao Kahn's "Soulnado" is constantly pulling in every soul that isn't nailed down.
    • Having just read this one, I have a suggestion for why this is: Shang Tsung deliberately lets Shao Kahn get a few souls for the Soulnado to divert attention away from himself while he schemes to overthrow his boss. Just look at his overthrow of Kahn alongside Quan Chi in Deadly Alliance.
      • Even better, how does Shang Tsung regain his strength? He drains the souls of his enemies - He can just let Shao Kahn take every soul in Earth Realm into the Soulnado, and then make his play for power with an unlimited supply of souls for him to feed on & gain power from whilst he does it.
  • It is well known that the Shokan have four arms, but why is that? This is something I always wondered about, then the answer hit me: they are half-human dragons, and dragons have six limbs: four legs and two wings! In the case of the Shokan, the hind legs became the legs, the forelegs became a pair of arms, and the wings became the second pair of arms!
    • I heard somewhere a rumor that the "half-dragon" part of the Shokan were from Onaga, their ancestor. Makes a bit of sense, given your Fridge Brilliance. However, look at Onaga's feet; they're hooves instead of normal dragon feet. Given your statement, it could be possible that the Centaurs are also part of Onaga's family, distantly related to the Shokan following a different evolutionary line. It could also explain why they want to one-up each other; they're instinctively trying to show which offspring of Onaga's is fit to rule.
    • Frankly, the whole half-dragon thing seems to have been thrown out. They do still use the term occasionally, but there's nothing particularly dragon-y about Sheeva or Kintaro. In fact, Goro and Sheeva belong to one sub-race of Shokan, called the Draco lineage (let me finish) and Kintaro belongs to the Tigrar lineage. My real-life theory is that they just decided to abandon the half-dragon thing. But as for in-universe, it is possible that someone heard Goro was a Draco Shokan, and assumed that there was a connection to the Latin word.
  • The new x-ray attacks inflict rather horrible damage to the victim, broken bones, destroyed organs, etc. And yet, characters can still keep fighting through injuries that would be fatal to normal human beings; presumably, everyone has sufficient superhuman stamina, durability, or regeneration to survive things like exploded spleens and smashed skulls. Suddenly, those end of fight fatalities make sense- they aren't gratuitous overkill, they are the only way to actually make your opponent *stay* down.
    • The forth game had the ability to break bones as a standard move. These moves didn't actually cause any more permanent harm than any other move, even though a normal person would be left unable to fight, several characters could even do neck breaks. Tanya's breaker move was to wrap her thighs around her opponent's head and spin 180 to break their neck, and one of her fatalities was an enhanced version, where she spins around three times, because simply breaking their neck once will not kill them.
  • Kabal is revealed to be Stryker's partner in the police force in the Mortal Kombat reboot. All of a sudden, it becomes a lot clearer why Rain captured them together in Mortal Kombat Annihilation, doesn't it? - Ry Rodrigo
    • That's more like Hilarious in Hindsight than actual Fridge Brilliance. In the original trilogy, there were no hints whatsoever that Stryker and Kabal were buddies.
      • Also, the fact that their Animalities (a skeletal, possibly prehistoric rhino and a tyrannosaurus, respectively) can possibly count.
  • It bugged this troper that Quan Chi was in MK9, considering it's a retelling of the original trilogy & Quan Chi didn't appear in the core games until MK4, so he didn't really fit in with the roster. But then I realised - Quan Chi is from that era, he was introduced in Mortal Kombat Defenders of the Realm which was set during the events of MK3.
    • Well, technically speaking, he's a Canon Immigrant from DotR. However, in the actual canon of the games, Quan Chi had been present before the events of the first game, as seen in Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero.
      • I wasn't actually talking about the canon of the games, though. If we're going from the continuity, then Ensemble Darkhorse characters like Kenshi & Sareena should have been included on the disc too, as their back stories place them as being active in the canon at the time of the original trilogy, despite not making their first appearances until later games.
    • Something that has been on my mind since I got the game is that no one should be surprised to see these characters. At first I was with you on seeing Quan Chi. Especially jarring was seeing Cyrax at the first tournament but while it takes place chronologically (sort of) before the games in which they were introduced, think about this: what kind of tournament only has 7 contestants? The original Mortal Kombat Tournament which we saw in the first game focused on the main cast, but we should assume that there WERE others there, just like in the movie. We just didn't see them because video games had small amounts of memory back then. And Kenshi and Sareena ARE there.
  • The character page for Scorpion says that Scorpion making his own costume a yellow version of Sub-Zero's is a case of Did Not Do the Research, since he's doing it to mock the Lin Kuei and call them cowards, when, in fact, the color yellow symbolizes courage in Japan, where he's from. It actually makes perfect sense, since his own yellow outfit as opposed to the Lin Kuei's non-yellow ones could be a symbolic way of saying "I have courage and you don't. Cowards."
  • Rain can do lightning thunder attacks. How does this make sense? Rain water becomes water vapor becomes clouds become rain water again through that familiar process we learned in school: evaporation, condensation, precipitation. And what usually causes thunderstorms? Those dark heavyweight-looking things called cumulonimbus clouds. So being able to do thunder is entirely within Rain's element, especially considering he's eventually established in canon as a demigod.
    • Similarly, Nightwolf is also able to do the Shocking Bolt because he's in tune with powerful spirits who likely would grant him the ability to control water and thunder to some degree as well.
      • It could very well be that he draws on the power of Raiden himself, seeing as Nightwolf's bio for 9 confirms that he had communicated with Raiden for some period of time before the first tournament. Additionally, he refers to Raiden as Haokah (the spirit of thunder and lightning in Lakota mythology) a few times over the course of the story.
        • But a heyoka is a Lakota contrary, and the spirit of thunder is Wakinyan.
          • However, in the first movie Raiden expresses a hint of behaving like a heyoka, when he laughs after saying something dramatic. In addition, according to The Other Wiki, Heyókȟa is also a spirit of thunder and lightning, who is said to use the wind as sticks to beat the drum of thunder. This is a common point with Japanese mythology, where Raiden is depicted as beating drums to create thunder.
  • Many of Nightwolf's abilities are stereotypes, but others require some research. Nightwolf's ability to reflect projectiles? Ghost Dance. Charging? Indians were notorious for running ability in the 19th century, which also relates to some brokenness in 3. His secondary style in Deception is tae kwon do. Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell won a medal in that very event in his youth.
    • Campbell was a martial artist, but the art he practiced was judo, not taekwondo.
  • I was wondering how Kung Lao beat The Deadly Alliance in MK 9 but got killed by Shang Tsung alone in the original timeline. Then it hit me Shang Tsung had Liu Kang's soul which means he either got on hell of a power boost or used Liu Kang's memories against him making sure he never had a chance.
  • Raiden's attack babble has always been a feature of the games, always assumed to be random gibberish. But in MK9, when Shao Kahn is defeating him in the Battle of Armageddon, we see him pick up his broken medallion and begin to chant in what we can assume to be an ancient language. That's most likely what he was always shouting.
    • Also, lots of fans started complaining about Raiden's severe case of holding the Idiot Ball in this game, particularly when it came to "He Must Win". If Raiden had sent himself the message, "Shao Kahn must win," then Kahn would have won the first (tenth, whatever) tournament fairly, legally allowing him to merge Earthrealm. So it actually did help that Raiden misinterpreted the message until the last minute.

Fridge Horror

  • If you thought Shao Kahn emerging as the Grand Champion of Armageddon was bad, it was going to get a lot worse. According to Shang Tsung's bio from the same game, the sole reason he came back from then dead was due to his pact with Kahn- as a matter of fact, all warriors who pledge loyalty to Kahn will do this, in order to keep serving him. So, with that said, it stands to reason that all of the villains who served under Shao Kahn will return, meaning that the Forces of Darkness will be free to run wild on every single plane of existence without resistance since the Forces of Light are dead.
    • A parallel example lies in Mortal Kombat 9 as well. It's hinted that if Shao Kahn dies, so will everyone who entered the pact with him. So when he is Killed Off for Real at the end of Story Mode, that means.....
    • Oh Crap, that means Shinnok will have less resistance with his invasion!
      • This pact explains why Shang didn't join Sindel in the Netherrealm after she was killed by Nightwolf even though his soul was used to empower her.
    • The Pact actually goes a long way to justifying Mortal Kombat's thusfar pretty pathetic deathtoll, the fact that its supposed to be a bunch of fights to the death yet hardly any characters seem to die. This means they did die- Liu Kang could have killed Shang Tsung, Goro and anyone else in the Outworld team in the original tournament, but they would have still returned for future games.
      • Would Mileena count as she is next for the throne though? Wouldn't Shao Kahn leave her some of his warriors?
  • Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance was stated on this wiki to be the series turning point, as it marks the moment the that the villains start winning. Consider exactly what happened in that game: Liu Kang and Shao Kahn (not really) were killed off right at the beginning. Now what has happened in Mortal Kombat 9? Oh sure, it's seems clear that dark times are ahead with Shinnok and Quan Chi getting ready to launch their own attacks on Earthrealm and Outworld, but when you consider that Kahn might really be dead this time...
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