Mortal Kombat is synonymous with violence, most notably with its fatalities. What is less well-known is how absurd and ridiculous many of those fatalities are. Let us see if we can alleviate some ignorance on that front. Here’s a list of the most absurd, the most ridiculous, the most over-the-top and silly fatalities in the Mortal Kombat series.
Quan Chi’s Neck Stretch
This one is on most ‘worst’ fatality lists, and with good reason. Quan Chi’s other fatalities include tearing off someone’s leg and beating them to death with it and slicing his foe to pieces with a sword. In Deadly Alliance? The game where he was literally the big bad guy? He hopped on his foe’s shoulders and stretched their neck way up in a polygon-bending display of lame.
Jax’s Foot Stomp
Jax tears off arms, splats heads, and apparently watched Ultraman for MK3. He stepped off-screen, growing to huge size, then stepped on his foe. Bonus points for leaving a bloody smear on the ground.
Reptile’s Animality
The animalities in Mortal Kombat 3 were an interesting addition and while some were awesome, others were… less so. Reptile’s was easily one of the weirdest. He turned into a chimpanzee and chased the opponent off stage. Let me repeat that. Reptile turns into a primate. I love irony.
Johnny Cage’s Triple Uppercut
Mortal Kombat has no small number of uppercut-based fatalities. With everything from exploding heads to most stage fatalities, it is clear why the move is so iconic to the series. Johnny Cage took it a step further, however, uppercutting his opponent’s head off not once, not twice, but three times in a row. No explanation for how he does it, that’s just how Johnny rolls.
Kabal’s Cranial Inflation
Both of Kabal’s fatalities in Mortal Kombat 3 were bad, but his ugly face screaming a person’s soul out was still not quite as ridiculous as his head inflation. Just look at the image of Stryker’s head getting inflated, and imagine him floating up off-screen immediately after, with a rain of body parts falling a moment later. This is a great example of a fatality the game’s graphics could not quite deliver on, but which also happened to have such a silly premise as to easily qualify it for this list.
Mileena’s Nail-Spit
As is obvious by now, many of Mortal Kombat’s fatalities are downright Saturday morning cartoon caliber silly. Mileena’s nail-spitting fatality in Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 was certainly not an exception. She swallowed a can full of comically-large nails and then spit them at her foe, causing them to burst into a spray of blood. The Looney Tunes are waiting for their royalty check.
Liu Kang’s Arcade Box
There is a certain appreciation for self-aware humor. Liu Kang took it to a new level in Mortal Kombat 3 with his arcade box fatality. While you could still get his iconic dragon fatality as his animality, if you just wanted to kill someone you could either cartwheel-uppercut them like in the original Mortal Kombat or you could drop the original arcade game on top of them, crushing them beneath its ESRB-inspiring weight.
Smoke Destroys the World
In what very well may be the ultimate in non-canon in-game cutscenes, we have Smoke. When human Smoke wins, he finishes his opponent with a fairly uninspired (though not terrible) uppercut fatality or a slightly more interesting if underwhelming teleport punch. Cyborg Smoke, however, opens his chest cavity to throw bombs all over the stage. The view then shows Earth. Earth explodes. “Fatality”. In terms of over-the-top, it is hard to beat that.
How about you? What do you think are the most ridiculous fatalities in Mortal Kombat? Let everyone know in the comments below!
