We remember the characters outside the franchise and from the cinema, comic or other video games that have appeared in the NetherRealm franchise.
Although it started out being famous for its extreme violence, it is a fact that NetherRealm has managed to do things well enough so that Mortal Kombat is today one of the most recognizable franchises when it comes to fighting. Grounded in a very recognizable game style, in huge amounts of content, multiplayer strength and, truth be told, in the explicitness of its visuals, Mortal Kombat 11 is the pinnacle of the hallmark that Ed Boon and his team have implanted throughout the years, obtaining millions of faithful around the world. And despite having gone through some moments of doubt, Mortal Kombat (2011) was able to return the license to the place it deserves, and among other things, it did so with a plethora of characters already perfectly recognizable, but also with some guests illustrious. After the announcement of the arrival of John Rambo to the Mortal Kombat 11 squad, we look back on the most stellar appearances of the franchise since then.
Spartan anger comes to Mortal Kombat
NetherRealm began to “invite” characters from other video games in the aforementioned installment of 2011, the ninth numbered, and the most prominent was neither more nor less than Kratos, who does not even need an introduction. The Ghost of Sparta -exclusive of the PS3 version- did not debut in a fighting game, however, since it had already made an appearance in Soul Calibur: Broken Destiny, released on PSP in 2009, but obviously, it was here when he got the most out of it. Boon and company had relatively easy to implement the Spartan in their game, since God of War was never a franchise that was not fussy when it came to capturing violence in each of its deliveries, God of War III being the last before from the launch of Mortal Kombat 2011. The Swords of Chaos, the Gauntlets of Deimos and even the head of Medusa took center stage in two fatalities at the height of the death of Helios in said third iteration.
But he was not the only guest then, and it is that one of the most famous villains in the history of horror movies also did his own thing. Stuffed in his characteristic striped sweater and hat, Freddy Krueger caused the nightmares of millions of children during the 80s in A Nightmare on Elm Street –with a very young Johnny Depp-, with scenes such as the famous bathtub, a saga created by Wes Craven , one of the greats of the genre, but also one of Mortal Kombat players. Krueger can boast of being the first Mortal Kombat guest character present in all its versions: PS3, Xbox 360, PC and PS Vita.
Horror and science fiction star in Mortal Kombat X
The good time that the franchise was experiencing after the resurgence of the previous installment served NetherRealm to bring together four very famous protagonists in their different cinematographic genres without difficulties. On the one hand, two aliens of indisputable popularity, also from the 80s, which certainly seems the decade in which the vast majority of members of the development team grew up. Directed by Ridley Scott in 1979, Alien: The Eighth Passenger was one of the great precursors of the combination between science fiction and horror that would so triumph in that decade, and the Xenomorph would arrive in that way in Mortal Kombat X (2015), with a great agility and some fatalities in which his hideous mouth was not lacking, as well as the presence of the Queen, who would make her film debut in Aliens: The Return, the 1986 sequel. Meanwhile, Predator (1987) showed us an Arnold Schwarzenegger on a special mission in Central America, although he would soon realize that there was something hidden in the jungle far more dangerous than the guerrilla he was facing in the beginning. Predator – with many sequels and spin offs – was another of the invited characters, with technology at the service of barbarism. After seeing them face off numerous times in various films of dubious quality, players could finally see them face to face in an excellent fighting game.
On the other hand, the precursors of the slasher – with permission from Michael Myers – would not remain their representation in this tenth installment. Leatherface (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) and Jason Vorhees (Friday the 13th) were also downloadable characters included in each Kombat Pack. Vorhees was already displaying cruelty in his presentation scene, in which he left the corpse of a girl, and with this machete and Leatherface’s recognizable and characteristic electric saw, they caused stages in the game the way they did with their victims in movies. Curiously, Jason and Freddy Krueger would see each other in a 2003 film of poor quality, a duel that could not be repeated in Mortal Kombat, however, as they both appeared in different installments. Both film sagas have already accumulated dozens of films, including Michael Bay having been involved in the production of several stories with Leatherface as the protagonist, as well as recognized actresses such as Jessica Biel or Jordana Brewster.
Mortal Kombat 11: heroes and villains
With the release of Mortal Kombat 11, which we are currently enjoying, it became a tradition among fans to speculate who would be the popular characters added to the game later. With the last one just announced, we already have up to 3 Kombat Packs, with the first of which already three invited fighters. One of them was Joker, with whom NetherRealm already had experience, having appeared in Injustice: Gods Among Us and Injustice 2, with characters from DC Comics at stake, and which had a wide repertoire of gadgets, given its limited ability with the fists. Spawn also arrived, probably the best known (anti) hero of Image Comics and created by Todd McFarlane –main artist of the ARPG Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning-, but the big surprise was the T-800, played by the aforementioned Schwarzenegger in Terminator , released in 1984 and that would lead to a very long series of films whose quality would gradually decline after what is considered one of the best sequels in the history of cinema: Terminator 2: The Last Judgment (1991).
Months later, he would see the arrival of another of the most beloved cybernetic heroes in the history of celluloid, Robocop (1987), a very visceral film whose remake was released six years ago, unfortunately, for all audiences, with the consequent reduction in its violence. In the original, Alex Murphy was a policeman recently arrived in Detroit who after a failed operation is converted into Robocop, giving law enforcement in the city of the state of Michigan, starring in Mortal Kombat 11 a new confrontation against the T-800, and is that a 1993 video game developed by Virgin, Robocop vs Terminator, already put them face to face.
Thus we come to the last addition, whose date is yet to be determined, as is John Rambo, a veteran of the Vietnam War played by Sylvester Stallone – who has lent his voice for the video game. After a first film with both drama and action, Stallone left the first for his other great film series of success in the 80s, Rocky, and left Cornered 2 and subsequent installments for a melee of shootings that delighted fans until Rambo: Last Blood, which aims to be the last movie of the character.
This is included with the Kombat Pack 3, with which two Mortal Kombat classics such as Rain and Mileena will also arrive, although at the moment no release date has been specified. What is certain is that we can continue to enjoy Mortal Kombat 11 on Xbox Series and PS5 from November 12 and 18, launch dates of both consoles respectively.
