Shang Tsung was acting at the behest of his master, the evil Emperor Shao Kahn, whose magic he channelises. According to the original game, the sorcerer Shang Tsung usurped an age-old Shaolin tournament, and transformed it into a battle of the realms. For the Earthrealm, the designated protector is the Raiden (named after the Shinto deity Raijin, the God of thunder and lightning), who defeated his fellow Elder God, the rogue Shinnok who thought he should govern all six of the realms by himself.Īll of which brings us to the tournament that lends the game its name - Mortal Kombat itself. Each of these realms is governed by an Elder God, and each has a unique Kamidogu that represents the essence of the realm. Eventually, these six different parts became the six defining realms of the Mortal Kombat universe: Earthrealm, Netherrealm, Outworld, Orderrealm, Chaosrealm, and Edenia. At some point, the Titans and the Elder Gods set aside their differences and united against the One Being They managed to split the One Being into six different weapons, called the Kamidogu. In the origin story of Mortal Kombat, there were three primordial sources of power in the universe: in decreasing order of power, these were the villainous One Being, the Titans and finally, and the Elder Gods. Ahead of the release of Mortal Kombat, a live-action reboot starring Lewis Tan, Jessica McNamee, Joe Taslim and others, here is a primer on the mythology and storytelling of this universe. In the almost 30 years since the launch of the original game, Mortal Kombat has grown into a sprawling franchise across media - comics, TV series, and both live-action and animated films. Interestingly, Van Damme would go on to star in the film version of Streetfighter a couple of years later, in 1994. If you were into one-on-one fighting games in the '90s and 2000s, you were either Team Streetfighter (intense, precise, all about the craftsmanship) or you were a Mortal Kombat loyalist (cartoonishly violent, gory, all about macabre humour and showmanship). The game that Midway launched eventually, Mortal Kombat (1992), would go on to become one of the most immediately identifiable video game franchises of all time. The character, Johnny Cage, was a brash, cocky Hollywood martial arts star whose ego often came in the way of his skills - he also shared Van Damme’s initials.

But Tobias and Boon used the experience to create a new character for the game they ended up developing.

Unfortunately for Midway, the Van Damme deal never materialised. Van Damme, a skilled martial arts practitioner nicknamed “the muscles from Brussels,' was known for introducing a more realistic, brutal form of hand-to-hand combat to Hollywood, courtesy films like Bloodsport (1988). In Cyberpunk 2077, the digitised likeness of Reeves is a playable character and, of course, the actor has done extensive voice work to lend star quality to the gameplay.īack in 1991, however, the idea of playing a video game as a digitised Hollywood star held considerable novelty value, which is why the erstwhile Chicago-based video game company Midway was approached to create a gaming version of the then-upcoming Jean-Claude Van Damme movie Universal Soldier (1992).Ĭomic book artist John Tobias and programmer Ed Boon thought that featuring Van Damme as a playable character would be a big hit among fans. By contemporary standards, a major Hollywood star like Keanu Reeves headlining a video game (in his case, Cyberpunk 2077 from last year ) is not particularly remarkable.

All the mortal kombat realms