Was death always meaningless?
0
I present for your reference... a complete abridged history of death and Resurrection in the Mortal Kombat series... as told by Gillbob316...
Which I have chosen to title: The Netherealm has a revolving backdoor...
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I'm breaking these down with "ish" because many of these stories get told across bios/endings between games... which makes them hard to pin down to one game...
MK1ish:
- Sub-Zero the First gets killed by Scorpion and is resurrected as Noob Saibot, getting a new job working for Shinnok. (Shinnok is an equal opportunity employer of the dead, as we'll learn later).
- Scorpion was already dead from the get-go, neither he nor Noob seem to have much problem being dead however, as they can still seemingly pop in and out of any damn realm they please, and continue to be fully functioning members of the MK Kommunity for years to come.
- Goro was killed by Liu Kang at the end of the tournament (Or so we THOUGHT!)... though rumors persist for years to come that Cage punched Goro in the balls and threw him off a cliff, much to Liu Kang's chagrin.
- Kano is allegedly also killed in the tournament (seems to be a pattern, as we'll go on to see...)
MK2ish:
- Kano turns up alive in Outworld, working for Kahn... or chained up next to Kahn's throne... depending on which day of the week it is.
- Noob and Scorpion are still dead but fully functioning members of the MK Kommunity.
End of MK2-Beginning of MK3ish:
- Cage got killed by Kahn's Extermination Squads and was resurrected after saying, "Huh... Heaven is closed. Guess I'll go be alive again." then jumping back into his apparently undamaged body.
- Mileena got killed by Kitana and popped up no worse for the ware in the Netherealm where she also took a job with Shinnok, who stuck her back in Outworld as a spy. She still got to wear a fashionable pink, and was not forced to wear a dull black uniform like Noob.
- Kano got thrown off a roof by Sonya and is allegedly dead again.
- Noob and Scorpion are still dead but fully functioning members of the MK Kommunity.
End of MK3-Beginning of MK4ish:
- After Kahn's defeat, Cage, now free to go to heaven, still decided to not be dead. Because he rather enjoyed living.
- Mileena, still technically dead, went back to the Netherealm, where she continued working for Shinnok, who again, sent her to invade other realms no worse for the ware.
- Goro pops back up and says, "Nah, I'm not dead... It's cool guys. Why'd you all think I was dead? Cage just punched me in the balls and threw me off a cliff. But I'm over it."
- Baraka may or may not have gotten cut in half by Kung Lao's hat slice fatality and then stapled himself back together. The rumors remain unsubstantiated, but Baraka does sport some conspicuous new decorative staples for this one game.
- Reptile gets "banished" to the Netherealm, where he, like Mileena, gets a job with Shinnok. I'm still not completely clear on where the distinction between Mileena dying to go there and Reptile just getting banished there lies. It seems in MK the Netherealm is hell, and Hell quite literally has a revolving back door... which may or may not be locked due to whims of the writers.
- In the Netherealm, we meet Shinnok's current employee Reiko, who may or may not have also been dead all along (I'm still not completely clear on that... but he was at least thought dead and living in the Netherealm up to this point, we are told)
- I should also mention at this point that Shinnok was banished to the Netherealm all along. Though like Reptile, I don't think he's actually dead. He just... lives there. In semi-retirement. Quan Chi, his vice president, also hangs out there a fair bit, but I don't think he technically has to. He oversees the day to day operations of Shinnok's company, and its several other branches. But eventually, Shinnok gets tired of hanging out in the Netherealm in semi-retirement and decides he wants to stretch his legs... so he throws an employee picnic in Edenia, along with all his dead or banished staff members, new and old.
- Noob and Scorpion are still dead but fully functioning members of the MK Kommunity.
End of MK4-Beginning of MKDAish:
- Shinnok gets beat up by Liu Kang and is once again "banished" to the Netherealm... but he's cool with it, because that's where all his stuff is anyway.
- Motaro it turns out, saves Kano from getting thrown off a roof with Magic. Kano is once again revealed to not be dead.
- For his trouble, Motaro gets stabbed to death by Sheeva (This won't last) who makes friends with Kano.
- For her trouble, Sheeva gets stabbed to death by Kahn, after Kano betrays her trust, completing the circle of Outworld gratitude
- For all HIS trouble, Kahn then gets killed by the Deadly Alliance, who just don't like him. (This won't last either). Kano, shockingly, remains fine.
- Liu Kang gets his neck snapped by the Deadly Alliance. Shang Tsung eats his soul.
- Goro gets killed by Noob, they even have a funeral this time.
- Around this point, everyone forgets Mileena and Reptile were ever dead and/or banished to the Netherealm, and the two of them just continue hanging out in Outworld, working for whichever bad guy seems appropriate at the time, as does Shinnok's other former employee Reiko, who we're still not sure was ever dead in the first place.
- Scorpion grabs Quan Chi and sucks him down to the Netherealm and proceeds to torture him. While not technically dead I don't think, Quan Chi still seems very upset about it... as though he's now stuck there... even though he seemed perfectly capable of walking in and out before this, as far as I could tell. Quan Chi has apparently lost his keys to the backdoor.
- Quan Chi makes a new friend in the Netherealm named Drahmin, who I'll note like Scorpion, is also dead but fully functioning when we first meet him. Drahmin's buddy Moloch however, is a Native of the Netherealm, and seems perfectly alive. Drahmin and Moloch help Quan Chi find his spare keys to the backdoor, which he happily unlocks and strolls out of with Moloch and Drahmin.
- Sareena sneaks out the backdoor behind Quan Chi. But despite living in the Netherealm, she's not technically dead either, she's a native like Moloch. A much prettier one.
- Noob and Scorpion, incase you'd forgotten, are still dead but fully functioning members of the MK Kommunity.
End of MKDA-MKDish:
- Frost freezes herself to death, but apparently in the long run, it's not enough to kill her (yes you read that correctly)
- Jax, Sonya, Cage, Kitana & Kung Lao are all killed by the Deadly Alliance and resurrected 10 minutes later by Onaga as his slaves. They all snap out of it in their due time, and are no worse for the ware.
- Onaga, I should mention, has been dead for thousands of years at this point, but apparently all he needed to snap out of it was to have his ghost dupe some guy into bringing him six rocks (which I should note, involved walking in and out of the Netherealm several times), and for Reptile to conveniently be standing near his corpse once he got the rocks.
- I should mention that while he's collecting rocks in the Netherealm, that dupe stumbles upon Sheeva's corpse. She's apparently the only person not important enough to wake up down there after dying... as her corpse gets very little dialogue. But this seemingly confirms her earlier death.
- Later in Outworld, scared that Onaga is now back, Raiden blows himself up in a fit of desperation, alongside Shang Tsung, Quan Chi and Onaga himself. The blast kills Raiden and Shang Tsung. Quan Chi survives because he had the foresight to duck and cover. Onaga survives because he's a badass that way.
- Liu Kang's ghost gets freed from Shang Tsung's body when he gets blown up.
- Shao Kahn shows up alive and well, and we learn it was a very lame clone he never mentioned having before which got killed earlier.
- Goro shows up alive and well, with Kahn, and we learn it was just some shokan who kinda looked like him that got killed earlier, and got to have a cool royal funeral he didn't deserve.
- Within the span of the same game he blew himself up in, Raiden shows up alive again... because gods can do that, but he's kinda emo about the whole ordeal.
- Someone brings Liu Kang's body back to life as a zombie (we later learn it was Raiden in a fit of emo rage)... meanwhile Liu Kang's aforementioned ghost decides to hang out and keep being alive(ish), kinda the same way Johnny Cage's did earlier, because he's kinda upset about his body being a jerk... plus he wants to hang out with the good guys some more. But he can't zap into his body like Cage did, because again, it's a zombie.
- Noob and Scorpion, are still dead but fully functioning members of the MK Kommunity. But Scorpion gets thrown into a Soulnado and finds God, and is reborn again as a Christian. (But is still dead).
End of MKD-Beginning of Armageddonish:
- Onaga gets killed by about 7 different people, who chain their endings together like the third Lord of the Rings movie. But the short version is Shujinko killed Onaga, then Nightwolf sucked Onaga to the Netherealm and left him there... where he was still pseudo-alive, kinda like Mileena was. (Nightwolf, like so many before him, just kinda walked down to the Netherealm to do this, then left mostly no worse for the ware... his soul was a little sinny from all the sins he'd eaten. But he lived.)
- Shang Tsung's ghost gets zapped back to Outworld, where he learns for the first time that he's not allowed to die until Shao Kahn says so. They stick his ghost in a convenient clone body, which they're evidently real good at making by now.
- Shinnok finds Onaga in the Netherealm on his afternoon walk, and decides to make him not dead again so long as he promises to play nice with the other bad guys. Because Shinnok has the master key to the backdoor to the Netherealm, so he can make those calls.
- Ashrah, another not technically dead native of the Netherealm like Moloch and Sareena... grabs hold of a magical floating sword, and rides it all the way out. But the sword is kind of a jerk, and wants her to kill cool guys like Ermac and Noob.
- Around this time we learn that Motaro never really got killed to begin with. Though 2 of his 4 legs didn't get the memo.
- Sheeva on the other hand... who we'd seen dead in the Netherealm before this point... finally seems to catch up with the rest of the cast, and learns that all she has to do is decide not to be dead anymore and walk out of the Netherealm. With renewed purpose... she does so, and continues her life as an evil minion. I assume she was able to because Onaga left the door unlocked.
- Noob and Scorpion are still dead but fully functioning members of the MK Kommunity.
End of MKAish:
- Blaze throws a party, and the entire cast is invited. Everyone from every realm shows up for Blaze's raging party at the pyramid. The living. The dead. The mysteriously absent people who had gone unmentioned for years. Even the dorky kids who no one really liked, like Chameleon and Meat got invites. Because Blaze was cool like that. Shinnok left the door to the Netherealm wide open so that anyone who may or may not have been dead at that point could attend. But everyone gets so super drunk on shots of Fireball that a fight breaks out, and everyone who hasn't died once or twice up to this point gets killed. Those who hadn't yet died finally got a chance to try it. Those who had died before got to do so again. Everyone except for Raiden, Shao Kahn and evidently Shinnok... who took a cue from Shao Kahn, and sent a clone to the party to get killed in his stead, because he's too old for fireball shots, and didn't want to get into it with all the drunks. Even though that doesn't really matter, because Kahn gets SO drunk... he blows up the universe anyway, then goes crazy. But not before Raiden sends a memo to himself in the past to try to avoid this party in the future, because things really got out of hand.
That's right... EVERYONE died except for Kahn... who went crazy. Including Noob and Scorpion. Who re-died. Finally.
MK9ish:
Past Raiden gets the memo from Future Raiden, but in his vague quest to stop the pyramid party from ever taking place, many more lives are lost, including a couple Sub-Zeros, Kung Lao, Shang Tsung, Shao Kahn, Jax, Jade, Stryker, Nightwolf, Kitana, Kabal, Sindel, Smoke, Liu Kang... and possibly some other people I'm forgetting. I won't bore you with more details, because it's all still pretty fresh in our minds. Most of them end up in the Netherealm, which as we all know by now bodes well for their return, as all it takes to get out of there is a brief period of employment with Shinnok, and then a trip out the back door.
Which evidently a few of them will get because...
MKX:
Kitana, Kung Lao, At least one of those Sub-Zeros, and probably a few other people are alive and well again, no worse for the ware.
Oh, but Hsu Hao has already died in the comic. But who cares about him. Really.
The End?
PS. If I missed anyone, feel free to call me a Noob with no understanding of the story and no clue. I was combing old bios and endings as I wrote this, and trying to be as thorough as I could, but I admit, it's entirely possible a few deaths and resurrections may have escaped my notice.
So lets see... Cage, Mileena, Kano, Goro, Noob and Scorpion all died in the Pre-3D era, with varying degrees of severity. Some of them a couple times.
In MK4 lots of people were already in, or ended up in and out of the Netherealm through various degrees of death and banishment, including Noob, Mileena, Reptile, Shinnok, Reiko, Quan Chi, Scorpion... etc.
Deadly Alliance was where we started killing guys off in background story a lot. Motaro, Sheeva, Kahn, Liu Kang, Goro...
Deception continued the trend with Kung Lao, Kitana, Jax, Cage Again, Sonya and Shang Tsung, among others...
None of it lasted, as by Armageddon, everyone was alive again with varying degrees of detail put into their resurrections.
And along the way, lots of other people while not technically dead strolled in and out of the Netherealm, including Quan Chi, Shujinko, Nightwolf, Sareena, Moloch, Ashrah, Shinnok... and others.
...
Oh, also... around MK2... a whole bunch of characters may or may not have died one more time, depending upon whether you do or don't believe Shaolin Monks was canon. But lets not get into that. It will just make our heads hurt.
To sum up: Where the line between death and the Netherealm lies in MK has always been a complete and utter blur. And that is the long and short of it. All that dying seems to do is send someone to the Heavens or the Netherealm, and since in MK The Heavens and The Netherealm are just two more realms... those people are perfectly capable of walking right back out of them, should circumstances allow for it.
The stakes of these games have never been life and death of individuals, but the survival of independent realms themselves. Earthrealm is what's at stake. Edenia is what's at stake. The Heavens are what's at stake. The board is what's being contested in these games... the players, like chess, can be killed and brought back as needed as the games start and finish.
Which I have chosen to title: The Netherealm has a revolving backdoor...
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I'm breaking these down with "ish" because many of these stories get told across bios/endings between games... which makes them hard to pin down to one game...
MK1ish:
- Sub-Zero the First gets killed by Scorpion and is resurrected as Noob Saibot, getting a new job working for Shinnok. (Shinnok is an equal opportunity employer of the dead, as we'll learn later).
- Scorpion was already dead from the get-go, neither he nor Noob seem to have much problem being dead however, as they can still seemingly pop in and out of any damn realm they please, and continue to be fully functioning members of the MK Kommunity for years to come.
- Goro was killed by Liu Kang at the end of the tournament (Or so we THOUGHT!)... though rumors persist for years to come that Cage punched Goro in the balls and threw him off a cliff, much to Liu Kang's chagrin.
- Kano is allegedly also killed in the tournament (seems to be a pattern, as we'll go on to see...)
MK2ish:
- Kano turns up alive in Outworld, working for Kahn... or chained up next to Kahn's throne... depending on which day of the week it is.
- Noob and Scorpion are still dead but fully functioning members of the MK Kommunity.
End of MK2-Beginning of MK3ish:
- Cage got killed by Kahn's Extermination Squads and was resurrected after saying, "Huh... Heaven is closed. Guess I'll go be alive again." then jumping back into his apparently undamaged body.
- Mileena got killed by Kitana and popped up no worse for the ware in the Netherealm where she also took a job with Shinnok, who stuck her back in Outworld as a spy. She still got to wear a fashionable pink, and was not forced to wear a dull black uniform like Noob.
- Kano got thrown off a roof by Sonya and is allegedly dead again.
- Noob and Scorpion are still dead but fully functioning members of the MK Kommunity.
End of MK3-Beginning of MK4ish:
- After Kahn's defeat, Cage, now free to go to heaven, still decided to not be dead. Because he rather enjoyed living.
- Mileena, still technically dead, went back to the Netherealm, where she continued working for Shinnok, who again, sent her to invade other realms no worse for the ware.
- Goro pops back up and says, "Nah, I'm not dead... It's cool guys. Why'd you all think I was dead? Cage just punched me in the balls and threw me off a cliff. But I'm over it."
- Baraka may or may not have gotten cut in half by Kung Lao's hat slice fatality and then stapled himself back together. The rumors remain unsubstantiated, but Baraka does sport some conspicuous new decorative staples for this one game.
- Reptile gets "banished" to the Netherealm, where he, like Mileena, gets a job with Shinnok. I'm still not completely clear on where the distinction between Mileena dying to go there and Reptile just getting banished there lies. It seems in MK the Netherealm is hell, and Hell quite literally has a revolving back door... which may or may not be locked due to whims of the writers.
- In the Netherealm, we meet Shinnok's current employee Reiko, who may or may not have also been dead all along (I'm still not completely clear on that... but he was at least thought dead and living in the Netherealm up to this point, we are told)
- I should also mention at this point that Shinnok was banished to the Netherealm all along. Though like Reptile, I don't think he's actually dead. He just... lives there. In semi-retirement. Quan Chi, his vice president, also hangs out there a fair bit, but I don't think he technically has to. He oversees the day to day operations of Shinnok's company, and its several other branches. But eventually, Shinnok gets tired of hanging out in the Netherealm in semi-retirement and decides he wants to stretch his legs... so he throws an employee picnic in Edenia, along with all his dead or banished staff members, new and old.
- Noob and Scorpion are still dead but fully functioning members of the MK Kommunity.
End of MK4-Beginning of MKDAish:
- Shinnok gets beat up by Liu Kang and is once again "banished" to the Netherealm... but he's cool with it, because that's where all his stuff is anyway.
- Motaro it turns out, saves Kano from getting thrown off a roof with Magic. Kano is once again revealed to not be dead.
- For his trouble, Motaro gets stabbed to death by Sheeva (This won't last) who makes friends with Kano.
- For her trouble, Sheeva gets stabbed to death by Kahn, after Kano betrays her trust, completing the circle of Outworld gratitude
- For all HIS trouble, Kahn then gets killed by the Deadly Alliance, who just don't like him. (This won't last either). Kano, shockingly, remains fine.
- Liu Kang gets his neck snapped by the Deadly Alliance. Shang Tsung eats his soul.
- Goro gets killed by Noob, they even have a funeral this time.
- Around this point, everyone forgets Mileena and Reptile were ever dead and/or banished to the Netherealm, and the two of them just continue hanging out in Outworld, working for whichever bad guy seems appropriate at the time, as does Shinnok's other former employee Reiko, who we're still not sure was ever dead in the first place.
- Scorpion grabs Quan Chi and sucks him down to the Netherealm and proceeds to torture him. While not technically dead I don't think, Quan Chi still seems very upset about it... as though he's now stuck there... even though he seemed perfectly capable of walking in and out before this, as far as I could tell. Quan Chi has apparently lost his keys to the backdoor.
- Quan Chi makes a new friend in the Netherealm named Drahmin, who I'll note like Scorpion, is also dead but fully functioning when we first meet him. Drahmin's buddy Moloch however, is a Native of the Netherealm, and seems perfectly alive. Drahmin and Moloch help Quan Chi find his spare keys to the backdoor, which he happily unlocks and strolls out of with Moloch and Drahmin.
- Sareena sneaks out the backdoor behind Quan Chi. But despite living in the Netherealm, she's not technically dead either, she's a native like Moloch. A much prettier one.
- Noob and Scorpion, incase you'd forgotten, are still dead but fully functioning members of the MK Kommunity.
End of MKDA-MKDish:
- Frost freezes herself to death, but apparently in the long run, it's not enough to kill her (yes you read that correctly)
- Jax, Sonya, Cage, Kitana & Kung Lao are all killed by the Deadly Alliance and resurrected 10 minutes later by Onaga as his slaves. They all snap out of it in their due time, and are no worse for the ware.
- Onaga, I should mention, has been dead for thousands of years at this point, but apparently all he needed to snap out of it was to have his ghost dupe some guy into bringing him six rocks (which I should note, involved walking in and out of the Netherealm several times), and for Reptile to conveniently be standing near his corpse once he got the rocks.
- I should mention that while he's collecting rocks in the Netherealm, that dupe stumbles upon Sheeva's corpse. She's apparently the only person not important enough to wake up down there after dying... as her corpse gets very little dialogue. But this seemingly confirms her earlier death.
- Later in Outworld, scared that Onaga is now back, Raiden blows himself up in a fit of desperation, alongside Shang Tsung, Quan Chi and Onaga himself. The blast kills Raiden and Shang Tsung. Quan Chi survives because he had the foresight to duck and cover. Onaga survives because he's a badass that way.
- Liu Kang's ghost gets freed from Shang Tsung's body when he gets blown up.
- Shao Kahn shows up alive and well, and we learn it was a very lame clone he never mentioned having before which got killed earlier.
- Goro shows up alive and well, with Kahn, and we learn it was just some shokan who kinda looked like him that got killed earlier, and got to have a cool royal funeral he didn't deserve.
- Within the span of the same game he blew himself up in, Raiden shows up alive again... because gods can do that, but he's kinda emo about the whole ordeal.
- Someone brings Liu Kang's body back to life as a zombie (we later learn it was Raiden in a fit of emo rage)... meanwhile Liu Kang's aforementioned ghost decides to hang out and keep being alive(ish), kinda the same way Johnny Cage's did earlier, because he's kinda upset about his body being a jerk... plus he wants to hang out with the good guys some more. But he can't zap into his body like Cage did, because again, it's a zombie.
- Noob and Scorpion, are still dead but fully functioning members of the MK Kommunity. But Scorpion gets thrown into a Soulnado and finds God, and is reborn again as a Christian. (But is still dead).
End of MKD-Beginning of Armageddonish:
- Onaga gets killed by about 7 different people, who chain their endings together like the third Lord of the Rings movie. But the short version is Shujinko killed Onaga, then Nightwolf sucked Onaga to the Netherealm and left him there... where he was still pseudo-alive, kinda like Mileena was. (Nightwolf, like so many before him, just kinda walked down to the Netherealm to do this, then left mostly no worse for the ware... his soul was a little sinny from all the sins he'd eaten. But he lived.)
- Shang Tsung's ghost gets zapped back to Outworld, where he learns for the first time that he's not allowed to die until Shao Kahn says so. They stick his ghost in a convenient clone body, which they're evidently real good at making by now.
- Shinnok finds Onaga in the Netherealm on his afternoon walk, and decides to make him not dead again so long as he promises to play nice with the other bad guys. Because Shinnok has the master key to the backdoor to the Netherealm, so he can make those calls.
- Ashrah, another not technically dead native of the Netherealm like Moloch and Sareena... grabs hold of a magical floating sword, and rides it all the way out. But the sword is kind of a jerk, and wants her to kill cool guys like Ermac and Noob.
- Around this time we learn that Motaro never really got killed to begin with. Though 2 of his 4 legs didn't get the memo.
- Sheeva on the other hand... who we'd seen dead in the Netherealm before this point... finally seems to catch up with the rest of the cast, and learns that all she has to do is decide not to be dead anymore and walk out of the Netherealm. With renewed purpose... she does so, and continues her life as an evil minion. I assume she was able to because Onaga left the door unlocked.
- Noob and Scorpion are still dead but fully functioning members of the MK Kommunity.
End of MKAish:
- Blaze throws a party, and the entire cast is invited. Everyone from every realm shows up for Blaze's raging party at the pyramid. The living. The dead. The mysteriously absent people who had gone unmentioned for years. Even the dorky kids who no one really liked, like Chameleon and Meat got invites. Because Blaze was cool like that. Shinnok left the door to the Netherealm wide open so that anyone who may or may not have been dead at that point could attend. But everyone gets so super drunk on shots of Fireball that a fight breaks out, and everyone who hasn't died once or twice up to this point gets killed. Those who hadn't yet died finally got a chance to try it. Those who had died before got to do so again. Everyone except for Raiden, Shao Kahn and evidently Shinnok... who took a cue from Shao Kahn, and sent a clone to the party to get killed in his stead, because he's too old for fireball shots, and didn't want to get into it with all the drunks. Even though that doesn't really matter, because Kahn gets SO drunk... he blows up the universe anyway, then goes crazy. But not before Raiden sends a memo to himself in the past to try to avoid this party in the future, because things really got out of hand.
That's right... EVERYONE died except for Kahn... who went crazy. Including Noob and Scorpion. Who re-died. Finally.
MK9ish:
Past Raiden gets the memo from Future Raiden, but in his vague quest to stop the pyramid party from ever taking place, many more lives are lost, including a couple Sub-Zeros, Kung Lao, Shang Tsung, Shao Kahn, Jax, Jade, Stryker, Nightwolf, Kitana, Kabal, Sindel, Smoke, Liu Kang... and possibly some other people I'm forgetting. I won't bore you with more details, because it's all still pretty fresh in our minds. Most of them end up in the Netherealm, which as we all know by now bodes well for their return, as all it takes to get out of there is a brief period of employment with Shinnok, and then a trip out the back door.
Which evidently a few of them will get because...
MKX:
Kitana, Kung Lao, At least one of those Sub-Zeros, and probably a few other people are alive and well again, no worse for the ware.
Oh, but Hsu Hao has already died in the comic. But who cares about him. Really.
The End?
PS. If I missed anyone, feel free to call me a Noob with no understanding of the story and no clue. I was combing old bios and endings as I wrote this, and trying to be as thorough as I could, but I admit, it's entirely possible a few deaths and resurrections may have escaped my notice.
So lets see... Cage, Mileena, Kano, Goro, Noob and Scorpion all died in the Pre-3D era, with varying degrees of severity. Some of them a couple times.
In MK4 lots of people were already in, or ended up in and out of the Netherealm through various degrees of death and banishment, including Noob, Mileena, Reptile, Shinnok, Reiko, Quan Chi, Scorpion... etc.
Deadly Alliance was where we started killing guys off in background story a lot. Motaro, Sheeva, Kahn, Liu Kang, Goro...
Deception continued the trend with Kung Lao, Kitana, Jax, Cage Again, Sonya and Shang Tsung, among others...
None of it lasted, as by Armageddon, everyone was alive again with varying degrees of detail put into their resurrections.
And along the way, lots of other people while not technically dead strolled in and out of the Netherealm, including Quan Chi, Shujinko, Nightwolf, Sareena, Moloch, Ashrah, Shinnok... and others.
...
Oh, also... around MK2... a whole bunch of characters may or may not have died one more time, depending upon whether you do or don't believe Shaolin Monks was canon. But lets not get into that. It will just make our heads hurt.
To sum up: Where the line between death and the Netherealm lies in MK has always been a complete and utter blur. And that is the long and short of it. All that dying seems to do is send someone to the Heavens or the Netherealm, and since in MK The Heavens and The Netherealm are just two more realms... those people are perfectly capable of walking right back out of them, should circumstances allow for it.
The stakes of these games have never been life and death of individuals, but the survival of independent realms themselves. Earthrealm is what's at stake. Edenia is what's at stake. The Heavens are what's at stake. The board is what's being contested in these games... the players, like chess, can be killed and brought back as needed as the games start and finish.
0
I lol'ed so hard my sides are killing me
0
Death in the mk universe does have a purpose. Everytime a character dies they go to the netherrealm right? How they get out changes them.
Hanzo dies =Scorpion
Sub Zero = noob saibot
Liu Kang = Undead
Johnny Cage also died but I dont think he was strong enough to escape or if he does it would require divine intervention (gods or elder gods)
Hanzo dies =Scorpion
Sub Zero = noob saibot
Liu Kang = Undead
Johnny Cage also died but I dont think he was strong enough to escape or if he does it would require divine intervention (gods or elder gods)
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Skulldunker125 Wrote:
Death in the mk universe does have a purpose. Everytime a character dies they go to the netherrealm right? How they get out changes them.
Hanzo dies =Scorpion
Sub Zero = noob saibot
Liu Kang = Undead
Johnny Cage also died but I dont think he was strong enough to escape or if he does it would require divine intervention (gods or elder gods)
Death in the mk universe does have a purpose. Everytime a character dies they go to the netherrealm right? How they get out changes them.
Hanzo dies =Scorpion
Sub Zero = noob saibot
Liu Kang = Undead
Johnny Cage also died but I dont think he was strong enough to escape or if he does it would require divine intervention (gods or elder gods)
Mileena dies and goes to the Netherealm. Leaves twice. Largely unchanged. Actually gains extra new power to read Kitana's thoughts.
Eventually decided to not be dead anymore and moves back into Kitana's old place like she owns the joint.
Yay for the old games having meaningful consequences to death! (Wait... what?)
Skulldunker125 Wrote:
Death in the mk universe does have a purpose. Everytime a character dies they go to the netherrealm right? How they get out changes them.
Hanzo dies =Scorpion
Sub Zero = noob saibot
Liu Kang = Undead
Johnny Cage also died but I dont think he was strong enough to escape or if he does it would require divine intervention (gods or elder gods)
Death in the mk universe does have a purpose. Everytime a character dies they go to the netherrealm right? How they get out changes them.
Hanzo dies =Scorpion
Sub Zero = noob saibot
Liu Kang = Undead
Johnny Cage also died but I dont think he was strong enough to escape or if he does it would require divine intervention (gods or elder gods)
Liu didn't go to the Netherrealm. he was consumed by Shang before he could go anywhere after death and his body was just an empty vessel acting out Raidens orders.
Man they really have to establish the "heaven" equivalent of the after life in this series.
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Yea. It's not a good game but not always a bad game. But I do wish that when Reptile dies, he's dead. Never coming back. Same with Ermac and Subby and anyone who isn't undead.
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Unfortunately, to quote one of the most beloved movies of all time
Get used to disappointment.
Get used to disappointment.
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