It was canon in the original timeline, that Quan Chi always in it for himself. Quan Chi in the original timeline just used people including Shinnok to deal with this problems. The current writers stopped caring about the lore a long time ago.

I like Quan Chi as a character. As corny as Richard Divizio was in Mortal Kombat Mythologies, he set the tone of Quan Chi that I like. Mortal Kombat 4 cemented his status as one of John Tobias's last great characters / villains for the series, to me.

He was used greatly in my opinion in MK: Deadly Alliance. I disliked him very much in this new timeline. MK9 made me really dislike him, because he took too much of Shang Tsung's role. In MKX he was so out of character, that he was too weak, to be taken seriously. Combine the fact the retcon of this new timeline, that Quan Chi's powers were tied to Shinnok, was really lame.

Yeah I was really disappointed with Quran chi in mkx I thought he would betray Shinnok and go it alone or with another villian but instead he was just a weak non-event for the whole story. Pretty cool seeing him getting his head chopped off though hopefully he doesn't come back from that

The only explaination here is that Quan Chi just didn't get a chance to switch out a dupe before he was killed by Scorpion, a development Quan Chi did not plan for. Either way Dark Raiden has the Amulet now.

But it was good they did explain (albeit indirectly) why Sub-Zero suddenly wants to go against his orders and help Raiden return the Amulet in Mythologies: That Quan Chi did not honor his side of their deal: The Amulet for Assassinating the Shirai Ryu.

We don't know for the certain the incantation he was speaking when he died.

That was one of the weirdest aspects of story mode for me. Quan Chi would have never given his life for someone else.

Very true, but I'd imagine, in a no win situation like he was in, that he would absolutely say "If I go down, the whole universe is coming with me".

There's no indication that he WASN'T self-serving. He just never survived to the point in the story where he would've betrayed Shinnok. Quan Chi's character was very different in this game. He seemed so beaten down and pathetic.

For all we know Quan was just as depressed in the original timeline between MK4 and Deadly Alliance. We are used to seeing him in the middle of a plot, but what is he like in between them? He couldn't have been all mwhahaha before finding the tomb of the Dragon King's army right?

Totally agree with all of this. And Quan Chi FINALLY getting killed by Scorpion should have been a much more epic event, but no, they made Quan weak for some reason and totally shot themselves in the foot. An over a decade long rivalry goes out with barely a whimper. Quan was so weak and defeated everything Scorpion did just looked super unnecessary and forced.

Even the basic plot of MKX was weird, Netherealm invades at the beginning and is defeated and then this new Kotal Kahn is introduced and this crazy/original Outworld civil war breaks out only to lead nowhere and the neatherrealm invades again in a bizarre, uninspired loop of a story. I think NRS needs new writers, the current ones already don't give a shit or have lost track of the original lore and do not know what to do with their characters and story. Like, as you mentioned, how in MK9 Quan and Shang serve the exact same role in the story until Shang is just flat out replaced by Quan and literally disappears. I'm sure its hard to rehash the same characters over and over but comics have been doing it for decades and they do it by switching up the writers. Almost any arcade ending, especially Quans, just furthers my belief the writers are out of steam as well.

This is why the reboot is lame. It just seems they are just taking events of MK's classic era and making dumb down versions of the story in MK9 and MKX, and just using it to tell a story, that doesn't even add up, to the point of exploitation and not nothing really creative.

In this new timeline Mortal Kombat Mythologies DID happen, the dialog in MKX storyline confirms it, even more so when you consider what Sareena says. Therefore, Quan Chi did have the real amulet at one point.

In this alternate timeline, when Raiden sent a mental message to myself during MK1 , he somehow made Quan Chi not only a hardcore loyalist of Shinnok before to MK1 , but also, he never made a copy of the amulet. Just goes to show you how much of a mess the MK storyline is right now. Keep in mind the MK Mythologies happened years before MK1.

In this alternate timeline, there never was a fake amulet. He had at least 25+ plus years like he had in the original timeline, to make one. Therefore, how could Quan Chi beat Shinnok at all, if he gave back the one thing that made him all powerful or even powerful enough to beat most people
? I doubt he had plans to betray Shinnok in this new timeline.



Between Mortal Kombat 4 and Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance Quan Chi was stalked and tortured by Scorpion, for at least 2- 3 years. After all that, he still had his wits and still was the same character in terms of psychology. As soon as he got out of Hell and found Dragon King's army, he was ready to set in motion , the plan to kill his enemies and wasn't weaken at all.

In this new timeline, the worst thing he had done to him get beaten by Raiden. Yet, in MKX he didn't seem like the same as he was before the events in MK9 and like many other character barely the same in the original timeline.