I recall reading long ago that it means "war" or maybe "strength"...but in what language?
Bizarrely, I can't find anything about it on Google. It doesn't match any Chinese or Japanese characters I've found so far, and there no longer seem to be any webpages anywhere on the internet discussing Kung Lao always having a symbol on his clothes.
It's like all record of it has disappeared off the face of the Earth. How can that be?
I feel you man, certain matters just seem to be deeply burried on the Internet.
I've searched EVERYWHERE for some extra Mortal Kombat Conquest material, like Behind the Scenes, or Making of MKC, or even some interview of the MK team in wich they say something about the series, but i've never found anything about it.
It's just frustrating.
This is a little different, though. I know this information USED to be on webpages. It's not like I read it in some old issue of Gamepro that doesn't exist anymore. That I could understand. How does something on the internet just disappear?
I mean Kung Lao's wikipedia page doesn't even have a Trivia section now. Was it always like that? I could swear it used to have one.
For the most in-depth, in-detail, Mortal Kombat lore analysis vids, there's only one source:
Curious symbol for a pacifist to be wearing all the time. No more curious than a hat that can be used to murder people, though. Kung Lao's "reluctant to fight" act never did make sense until the end of MK3.
I mean "Skipped the tournament because he didn't want to abandon the White Lotus"? What does that even mean? The White Lotus's mission is to protect Earth from invasion. Mortal Kombat is HOW you protect Earth from invasion! It's goddamn contradictory.
I know, I'm too late. However I wanted to share this. As an interesting fact, the Kung Lao's chinese character 武 is also explained in a martial arts movie, No Retreat, No Surrender (1985) , in which we can see the protagonist taking his very first lesson from who seems to be Bruce Lee's ghost. This is what he expresses while writing:
— The character 弋 wù is made up of qoi which means violence or force, plus this character 止 zhǐ meaning stop. We practice how to stop violence. What you learn from me is for defense only and should not be misused, that's the idea, it's your move. You don't wanna listen then, bye.
Here's the link to it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2OuZOZ8vPo
Minute 48:03