With more time and care, these could’ve helped the old games

This post was originally supposed to be about different archetypes in anime, though I’m delaying that to sometime in December as I don’t yet have enough research to discuss those in full detail. This week, however, I’ll bring up something that has crossed my mind before, but not with enough frequency to expand upon: forgotten plot points from the 3D Mortal Kombat universe.

The original idea came from a MojoPlays video that I couldn’t f[head rip]king find until a few minutes before writing this because I misremembered the title. Abandoned Story Threads instead of Forgotten Plot Points; potato, potahto. Either way, the video can be viewed on the MojoPlays channel through the link below.

Credit: MojoPlays

The gist of the video is that throughout the series, the Mortal Kombat games have introduced plot points that were about to heat up only for the devs to go in a different direction. With over 30 years out on the market, you’ve got your pick of the litter to choose from. For this week, it’s the 3D games from MK Deadly Alliance to Armageddon. Here’s the f[scream of pain]king short version: starting with Deadly Alliance, Quan Chi escaped from a fiery ass-whoopin’ at Scorpion’s hands, discovering the Dragon King’s “undefeatable” army in the process and bringing these mummified warriors to Shang Tsung where they formed a bond based on ignorance.

Context:

Channel: Kamidogu

After the Deadly Alliance is formed, they remove all obstacles that would block them from ruling all existence. Not happy sucking up to Shao Kahn for millennia, they kill him in his throne room then make their way to the Wu Shi Academy where Shang Tsung finally gets to consume the soul of the greatest warrior in Mortal Kombat History: The Great Kung Lao I mean, Liu Kang!

OGs can’t be beat!

So with Liu Kang and Shao Kahn dead, they operate a tournament under false pretenses in Outworld and use the defeated to return the mummified army to life with the goal of marching on Earthrealm with malicious intent. Raiden saw this from the heavens and organized the remaining warriors across the realms to stop them. Fun fact, you can find archived websites and forums debating the plot points of then-upcoming games, like this website MKSecrets.net, which for some reason still looks like it was made in 2001 even though it has details on MK1 (2023)… I thought that was most Japanese websites…?

Anyway, MK: Deception picks up from the premise of Deadly Alliance only the sorcerers were too powerful for all of the warriors (could’ve probably sent them all as a group, but MK9 proves that that wouldn’t have helped much) and so at his wits end, Raiden challenges them himself. Not even a thunder god could defeat the sorcerers and realizing that their goals were nearly complete, what was left was the amulet Quan Chi stole from Shinnok in MK4. He hangs onto it defeating Shang Tsung in the process, only to have Onaga reborn (hinted at from Reptile’s ending in the last game) and return to reclaim the army that the sorcerers so generously returned to life with the souls of conquered fighters.

All three men realize that danger was marching towards them and while they managed to temporarily hold them back, Raiden uses a last ditch attack on the Dragon King. It failed to even scratch him and he grabs a hold of the amulet which will be needed to form the six Kamidogu into a single entity.

Channel: MKIceAndFire

As for how Onaga acquired the Kamidogu, well it involved tricking a young boy named Shujinko and leading him across reality by the nose for 40 years. If this game were canon, that would’ve come back to bite Onaga in the ass, only for Shujinko’s efforts to go unrecognized as redemption and still get punished by a Dark Raiden. This will become important later.

Shaolin Monks was a bit of a beat ’em up remake of MKII (kinda) and I’d already talked about that before, so we’re skipping it considering it has nothing to do with the 3D trilogy anyway.

Armageddon was supposed to cap it all off and the more I’ve thought about it, the more it felt like a final send off before Midway got the crappy ideas out of the way in time to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2010.

Let’s not be too harsh though, it did help pave the way for the Injustice line.

Story-wise, the protector god of Edenia, Argus, is made aware that between the actions of the sorcerers and Shujinko being duped for that long, the warriors of the realms were learning more about the construction of the realms than the Elder Gods would be comfortable with and proposed to Argus to come up with a solution. He suggested total annihilation to protect the realms from their own residents, but his wife Delia suggested depowering them all since there were many heroes who fought tooth and nail to defend the realms from evil, not the least of which was Shao Kahn and Shinnok (whom we learn later was banished to the Netherrealm for eternity for treachery, leaving Quan Chi to do the heavy lifting through the Brotherhood of Shadow).

They’re granted the power to do this and choose to do so by making a competition of things for their sons Taven and Daegon. If things went to plan, the two men would engage in a friendly competition, grab their weapons and armor and race to defeat their mother’s firespawn (half-brother?) Blaze to achieve full godhood as both of them are demigods. In reality, the two brothers, under the watchful eye of a pair of dragons, Orin and Caro, are set on a different path. Caro, who was the guardian dragon of Daegon, lost contact with Blaze believing it to be an early sign to set him on his path. Instead, Daegon forms the Red Dragon clan in Caro’s name and signs off on unethical science experiments for the purpose of choking existence into coughing Blaze up. The way its presented makes me think of Unit 731 in Manchuria and its surgeon general Shiro Ishii. If you don’t know, look it up at your own peril.

This makes Daegon the antagonist of the Konquest mode and through no fault of his own Taven loses sight of the purpose of his quest. And his frustration and confusion at this whole course of events is best reflected at the several times he’s questioned and even considered abandoning ship. The quest stopped being fun for him as he lost the things he cherished. Blaze appeared at the end to catch him up to at least what the true purpose of the quest was and Taven is a hero if we compare him to the Ancient Greek model similar to Perseus or Theseus. Self-serving at times, but the guy still knows the difference between good and evil. Daegon’s descent into evil seems random until he learned that he was supposed to lose the quest and decided to take matters into his own hands, hence the birth of the Red Dragon.

Dropped and abandoned plot points are still a problem for the series as it’s developed a reputation for introducing points and leaving them to collect dust. We barely get five minutes with the concept before the devs (read: Ed Boon and John Tobias) moved onto something else. You could say the fandom is also to blame for this as dedicated fans have asked (demanded) the team to release canonically deceased characters as DLC, but staying with the 3D games where the problem expanded, there’s more to say about it during this era than anywhere else in the series.

Starting with Deadly Alliance, Shao Kahn was established to be killed in the intro to this game, with Deception and Shujinko’s story acting as a prequel taking place some years before the events of Deadly Alliance where it all converges. Shujinko himself was invited twice by the White Lotus Society and later by Shang Tsung himself to represent Earthrealm in the tournament but couldn’t attend for different reasons. The White Lotus got tired of waiting for him to power up (never mind that the tournament is hosted every 50 years) and due to his cleansing journey with Nightwolf, he had to go back to the Netherrealm to gather more hatred, from none other than the ghost of Hanzo Hasashi.

This part doesn’t necessarily screw around with the timeline as egregiously as following plot points, but Armageddon is where it all breaks down. Canonically dead characters are resurrected off-screen and based on what we know we can connect the dots, but often the devs are a bit cagey when it comes to showing how, who and/or why characters are returned to life. The 2011 continuity shows that Quan Chi has brought Noob and Sindel back to life and claimed the souls of those killed by Sindel herself in the eleventh hour, but it’s not shown whether he brought Shao Kahn back to life or if he did why he’d do so, or even why the rest of the villains would agree to this arrangement.

Channel: BruskPoet

I’m not saying this moment in the story is bad, I like it a lot. But the nonexistent explanation for how all this can come to be is what sours me on it somewhat. I’d say there’s no care for a consistent timeline especially in a fighting game (something that doesn’t escape Tekken), but I think it’s more along the lines of the devs wanting their personal favorites to shine brighter than the others, which is why the franchise works better as video games and toy lines than it does movies.

Most of the time…

For what it’s worth, the characters have been mostly consistent with a few touch ups here and there, but if you ask people like The4thSnake, there’s a lot under the hood that could use some light to heavy rewiring from individual characters to whole ass f[swords clashing]king plot points, like what I’ve been writing about here. I’m a bit torn personally, because it brings a charm not found in other series, but this many plot holes treats the timeline like a redheaded step child. Doesn’t stop people from trying, as I’ve stated before, I rewrote MK: Shaolin Monks myself like it was Dragon Ball as that was what I was watching at the time.

Why bother with the 3D games, though? Well, of all the plot points introduced and left by the wayside, the 3D games did it the most and the worst of any other era, which seems to be the result of developmental inconsistencies prior to release on store shelves. It certainly hasn’t stopped people from trying though and it likely will keep going for as long as there is a Mortal Kombat to fix. Nothing too serious at this point, but it’s both fun to expand on what was and offer critique for one of the series most tumultuous times in its history.