Mortal Kombat 9/Nightmare Fuel

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


When Ed Boon said that this would be the bloodiest MK game of the series, he wasn't making stuff up. What he didn't tell us is that most of it would give us horrible nightmares.

  • The intro sequence of the Story Mode. Every single character that appeared in the series until Armageddon is dead and in bloody chunks save for Shao Kahn and Raiden, the former beating the ever-loving crap out of the latter while delivering a chilling "The Reason You Suck" Speech... And to get into more detail, just to see how horrorsome it is: dead bodies everywhere; vultures eating Sonya's severed body, Johnny Cage's head, Baraka cut in half by Kung Lao's razor hat, you name it.
    • The fate of ALL but two of the members of the Forces of Light. Raiden's failure to successfully interpret the visions of his future self led him to make mistake after mistake, each one more costly than the last. Nine of the heroes died in the battle against Sindel, and all of them are now slaves of Quan Chi. Liu Kang, the most devout of the group, loses his faith in Raiden and is accidentally killed by him. And after everything's said and done, all that's left for the final fight are Johnny Cage and Sonya...
    • Shang Tsung's demise: Shao Kahn basically absorbs Shang into himself, much like when Shang steals a soul. Talk about Irony.
  • The X-Ray combos, showing bones snapping like twigs and organs pulsating.
    • Sub-Zero's X-ray combo is especially horrifying: he plunges his hand into the victim's side, freezes their liver, and crushes it.
    • Goro's X-ray move deserves special mention. He lifts up his opponent and squeezes their head so hard that their skull CRACKS, exposing some of the brain. This is then followed by a one-handed toss to the ground, which breaks the skull and neck even further.
    • Quan Chi's X-ray takes People Puppets and refines it to a horrific extent. He controls them with his amulet and tosses them a skull, which they proceed to ram against their skull and crack it. After that, he forces them to snap their own neck.
    • Baraka, Kitana, Reptile, and Skarlet all give the opponent Eye Scream.

      Baraka uses one of his blades to lift the opponent and stab them through their neck and then one of their eyes.

      Kitana warps behind the opponent and sticks her fans in the back of their skull, then warps in front of them and removes the fans only to put them through the eyes

      Reptile sticks his fingers (which have claw-like nails) through the eyes and snaps the neck before kicking them away.

      Skarlet slams her palm into their face before sticking one of her high heels into an eye.
  • Many of the fatalities easily qualify, which isn't surprising.
    • One that truly stands out is Noob Saibot's "Make a Wish". He summons his shadow clone on the opposite side of the opponent. Both he and the clone grab onto the opponent's legs and pull, slowly ripping the opponent in half vertically, with the opponent still alive throughout the entire thing until their body splits completely.

      And then there's his second Fatality, "As One". He summons his shadow clone, which drags his opponent down into a portal and then closes it shut on their waist, severing them in two. The character in question then agonizingly crawls to their death after Noob, with blood spewing from where their legs used to be.
    • Good luck getting a good night's sleep after seeing Mileena's fatality.
    • Kung Lao is no slouch in horrifyingly gory finishers either. See for yourself...
    • Shang Tsung's "Possession" fatality: he turns himself into a mist form and flies inside the opponent, leaving them confused. It appears to do nothing until their eyes glow green and their hand starts moving on its own, reaching for their head. They try to push it away, but cannot. As their hand grabs onto their head, they let out a horrified "No!" before ripping it off themselves. Shang then flies out of the body and lets out an Evil Laugh.

      His other fatality is gruesome itself. Remember the Joker's gun fatality in Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe? By the time of the second gunshot you see the victim's head explode right in front of you.
    • Skarlet's "Blood Bath" fatality is particularly horrific; not only does she slit your throat, but she tilts your head back and lets your blood spray on her.

      Her second fatality, "Make It Rain", is even more terrifying. She stabs herself and melts into a puddle of blood that slithers underneath the opponent. Then, four spikes made of hardened blood come out of the puddle, impaling the opponent through their arms and legs and lifting them above her, who emerges shortly after. She then proceeds to cut the opponent open and lets the blood rain down on her.
    • Scorpion "Nether-Gate" fatality consists of him first stabbing his opponent in the chest with his spear and wrapping the chain around them, then kicking them into a portal to the Netherrealm that flays them alive. Their skeleton drops out of another portal, still hanging from Scorpion's chain.

      The Klassic Skins DLC also includes his classic "Toasty!" fatality, rendered in all of it's 3D glory and horror.
    • Stryker's "Time Served": First he tasers the opponent, then blows the top of their head off with brain and bone fragments flying everywhere. If that wasn't bad enough, you can briefly see what's left of the lower half of the opponent's jaw with the tongue jerking around spasmodically.
    • Sheeva's "Stripped Down" fatality is now rendered in all of its horrifically bloody HD glory.
    • Smoke's "Smoked Out" involves Smoke plunging his fingers into his opponent's cranium and then removing them, where his smoke then melts his foe like acid from the inside out. The player is greeted by the hapless victim screaming in pain as their skin and most of their muscle tissue is burned away.

      His second fatality, "Tremor", involves him doing his smoke teleport...through the opponent. They scream as vapor issues from their eyes and ears before falling apart in bloody chunks.
    • Nightwolf's "Ascension" fatality consists of sending the skin of his defeated opponent to Heaven. Just the skin.
    • Kenshi's "Scatterbrained" fatality gives the opponent a camera-breaking Eye Scream.
    • Rain's first fatality, "Bubble Burst", is absolutely horrific. He creates a large bubble of water over his opponent's head which forces itself down into their mouth, causing them to expand to terrifying proportions...then they explode.
    • Even the bosses have fatalities, and they're just as sick as the others:

      Goro can either tear your head off and rip it into fourths, or dismember you before tearing your body in half lengthwise.

      Kintaro can either rip off your arms and head (and rip the head in half, as well), or quarter you with his bare hands.

      But Shao Kahn is the Emperor of brutal fatalities: he either tosses you in the air and smashes you to bits with one swipe of his hammer, or plunges his bare hands into your chest and tears you in half like he was parting a curtain.
  • While the Krypt is usually a disturbing place in most of the games, it generally is not bad enough to warrant any scares. Mortal Kombat 9 breaks this tradition by including a random screamer in it. Emphasis on random.
  • The stage fatalities.
    • In the Street, you are thrown in front of a taxi and get decapitated on impact with its bumper. To make matters worse, the beheaded body still lies there...twitching...
    • In the Deadpool, your skin and all facial tissues are melted off by acid.
    • In Scorpion's Lair, your face is burned off by lava. It's a wonder none of it splashed up on the other fighter.
    • In the Subway, your head is repeatedly slammed against a passing train and then thrown in front of another one.
    • Kratos' Arena has an option to do THREE different death traps: crushing, burning alive and being sliced into pieces.
    • Remember how Shaolin Monks was the first time you could actually feed your enemies to the trees in The Living Forest? Yeah that's back in this. The victor tosses their dazed opponent into the maw of a hungry tree that proceeds to chew away, eventually biting off the legs and swallowing the torso. As the camera zooms out, the legs are still twitching.

      And It Gets Worse: the Stage Bio for it says "They say those who are consumed by the forest become the forest, their faces engraved into the trees", so you might've just doomed your victim to an eternity of agony, and probably don't care.
  • As the battles wear on, characters experience more than Clothing Damage; exposed brains, eyes, skulls, etc. The characters look like they're ready for a trip to the morgue.
    • The worst by far is Kabal, whose mask can be knocked off, (something which should kill him, but we can see the breathing hose is connected to his throat) revealing just how gruesome a toll the experience of being burned alive by Kintaro can take on your appearance.

      Speaking of which, said experience is horrorsome on it's own: in Chapter 12, after witnessing Raiden's murder of Motaro, Kintaro appears in front of both Stryker and him and proceeds to roast the latter.
    • Special mention goes to Cyber Sub-Zero, whose brain gets exposed. This also happens to the Retro Cyber-Ninjas and Sektor's default if you look closely.
  • The DLC character Skarlet. The concept of a warrior made from the blood of fallen warriors and capable of manipulating blood is frightening enough, but her attractive appearance acts somewhat as Nightmare Retardant.
  • If, with everything mentioned above, MK9 wasn't nightmare-inducing enough, the fact that Freddy Krueger himself is a Guest Fighter totally seals the deal.
    • That being said, his fatalities are no slouches either:

      In the first one, he summons a boiler out of the ground, and then tosses the conquered foe in it. They start burning to death; not immediately like Scorpion's "Toasty!" fatality, slowly. They try to stumble out, but all they can do is get one of their arms out of it, and Freddy slams the boiler door on the grasping appendage (if you pay attention to the arm, it's still moving), severing it. The arm is still on fire. There's no indication how long it'll take them to die.

      His second one has him appear behind his opponent, impale them with both claws, and drag them into a hole that appears within the ground. It soon closes up. And what comes next? A geyser of blood. Extra points to how it doesn't show what the hell he's doing to them.
      • Bonus points for both fatalities being iconic deaths from the movies. The first is Freddy's own death, and the second is a paraphrased version of Glen's death in the first movie.
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