I really like what you gave Shinnok. I think that'd be the perfect weapon for him. Same for Onaga. Though, he could just use one large mace. But two would be cool, still.

I dunno about Jax. I kinda see Jax using a bowie knife or machete. Sonya using a tactical blade like a k-bar or a bayonet (as you mentioned) is a good choice.

A 3-sectioned staff for Fujin is interesting. It's not an easy weapon to learn off the bat and can be quite effective. To separate him from Raiden, who has a staff himself, a 9-ring broadsword would be an interesting fit. It's quite unique looking and intimidating. Instead of the bear motif on the edge of the pictured blade, a Chinese character for "Wind" or a dragon head could be used.

The sabre would work w/ Mavado. Or maybe a more classical blade. It might allow his movements to resemble Spanish Swordfighting and fencing.

Does a 9-ring broadsword take a different technique or fighting style to wield than a traditional dao?

I dunno if we ever again need a game where every single character has a weapon, a lot of them end up feeling forced. If everybody is special, then no one is, y'know? Baraka's blades and Kabal's hookswords no longer stand out and seem unique. Plus I really could never see Liu Kang or Ermac for instance wanting or needing a sword or axe. I kinda buy Liu with the nunchucks 'cause he's Bruce Lee, but that's it.

Nothing really seems appropriate for Fujin to me, either. Raiden and his staff I buy because he's a god who walks the Earth like a man a lot, spending time with the people. I see him traveling with a big walking stick like the Gandalf of Mortal Kombat. Fujin, on the other hand, never struck me as all that fond of mortals or mortal things, I think he'd rely on his powers and godhood and never need a physical object to beat people with. Plus, lightning and a lightning rod, that makes sense. Wind is the element with no substance though. If you wanted to be silly, I guess he could club people with a windsock/butterfly net...but no. The Wind God fighting with a material thing just doesn't seem to fit the theme. And he's a flier, and swinging a weapon in flight seems awkward to me. Anyway, that's why I liked the crossbow so much in MK4, shooting energy at the opponent seemed more appropriate for him than swinging a melee weapon. Granted, it didn't function well in gameplay, the crossbow should just be a special move. But there you go.

That said, if we WERE to bring back weapons for everyone...

I like your pick of a pitchfork for Shinnok, Sareena sticking to the kamas, and Scorpion using his spear as a ropedart, and I love the pocket knives for Kira. And yes, Noob should always have a scythe.

I think Sub-Zero should stick to the Kori Blade or other designs sculpted from ice though, unless that's what you meant by "frozen". And I'll never be happy with a Dairou who isn't a dual katana weilding Ronin like his MKDA concept art.

I also think some of your picks are too generic. For instance, the sabre you picked for Mavado doesn't look very different at all from the chinese broadsword or the scimitar. I'd give him a straight, thin rapier. Wakizashis probably aren't the most creative way to go with Taven and Daegon either. I think perhaps just taking the "Drakeswords" and making them more memorable looking, coming up with something iconic that could be instantly identified on sight as "That's Taven and Daegon's weapons" is the way to go.

Quan Chi should have something that looks evil and magical, like that head on a staff they almost gave him in DA that would've spit locusts.

I'd also like to see Tanya go back to using the boomerang from MK4. She could swing it like a knife or throw and catch it as a special move, no different from Kitana's fans. If Scorpion's spear could be done as a weapon, so could that.

Bo' Rai Cho's cane should look more like a cane, too. I'd like to see it bend into a handle at the top, and maybe incorporate some moves where he uses it to hook around people's necks or ankles and yank them around/trip them.

Agreed. I just sort of did this for fun.



That is what I meant.



I, on the other hand, will never be happy with anyone that wields multiple Katanas. That includes Tasia. A Katana was a two-handed weapon. Occasionally Samurai supplemented them with a wakizashi, but there is no fighting style that incorporated dual Katanas. It's not practical, and not really feasible. They're too large and heavy.




Yes, but they use different fighting styles. Although, I did consider giving him a rapier.



Drakeswords aren't a real weapon. And I tried to stray away from using fake weapons except in special circumstances (like Baraka or Cyrax).



Again, I tried to stray from fake weapons. But he would definitely wield something magical.




That would definitely make sense.



I like that one too.

When dealing with fictional characters from magical worlds that are decidedly not the planet Earth, you HAVE to have some fictional weapons and styles in there.

Weapons work the same way though. A long sword is a long sword in Outworld too in Mortal Kombat. The drakesword is still a longsword (if a real life model would be made, a fairly useless one might I add, but this IS fantasy)

Ninja-to is fictional. Not only were the samurai sword pairs extremely rare to obtain, ninjas were not nobility and assassination tools were more effective. Rarely did ninjas use blades for war or battles.

Wakizashi were daggers, knives as supplementary short blades for indoor combat (katana-type weapons were forbidden in homes). It is a close quarter weapon for a specific situation. Also, since Daegon and taven are admittedly based on greco-roman styles latin or roman weapons would be more fitting.

The scythe is not a weapon. The only written document detailing some fights with a scythe (which looked nothing like an actual war scythe) comes around in the German fiefdoms in around 16.th c. and even then it found no good reception among fencing experts, swordmasters.

The proper construction would be that the blade is straightened out like a spear, looking nothing like a sickle. It was the predominant weapon in Middle Europe throughout the middle ages in peasant uprisings and even went into use during the 1956 Hungarian anti-communist revolution. The classic scythe is unwieldy and fairly useless in combat use.

Also drop the Noob Saibot is a grim reaper analogy. It is fairly stupid and completely breaks the atmospheric mold. A chinese assassin looking like a westerner incanation of death.

So far, there are no dual jian techniques I saw. And whz should Liu Kang have a jian in the first place? Hero must have the sword? Atavism. Shang is much more fitting for a noble weapon thanks to his latest incarnations, plus, having his name be Temple Elder in the first place...

Not every weapon is "dual-vwieldable" - such like European medieval swords. It is futile and utterly redundant. Dual wielding was implemented to combat multiple foes at once in Japan for example or simultaneous attacks with preferably light weapons (China, shaolin).

So far it has been diluted in popular culture into something that suggests expertise which is plainly missing the point. Also, it is such a cliche that it should be avoided.

Well, you're very right about most of those things. (Although, I would like to stress that during the Black Plague there were reports of individuals dressed in black carrying scythes and spreading a "mist" stretching from Europe to China; that resemble the Western depiction of the Grim Reaper. However, yes, that aside, the Chinese personification of death is completely different from most Western versions.)

I should change Taven and Daegon to a more western weapon.

I'm aware that a scythe is not traditionally a weapon, however, one can almost not deny the fact that it is the most popular "weapon" that Noob Saibot has ever used. And, although, he bears no similarity to any Grim Reaper from and legend (unless you include the skull-face in his MK4 alternate costume, and the hood in his MK4 tertiary costume), I, and many other MK fans still like the imagery. However, maybe a more realistic weapon would work.

As for the jian:
I was under the impression that there were dual jian techniques. However, you're probably right. And Liu Kang having a sword because he's the hero was not a thought in my mind. I'm not that pedestrian. The reasoning came from the fact that I felt like the nunchaku was never an effective enough weapon (not to mention, it's Japanese in origin) to be used by the Mortal Kombat champion. And from the fact that I struggled to come up with something that was lightweight and easily transportable, and something befitting a Shaolin Monk. Quite frankly, the weapons most befitting of a Shaolin monk are staffs or monk's spades. And Raiden had first dibs on the staff, in my book, and I thought a monk's spade was too large and bulky to be used by the rather agile Liu Kang. However, if you believe a monk's spade can be used in more grandiose and gymnastics-like (for lack of a better word) martial arts techniques, I might revise that one.

I think that if you look at my list you'll find that most of those weapons are capable of dual wielding (I know that Sheeva's urumi is not, however I made an exception because of her four arms). However, you're right, some are not; and that's something that needs revising.

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Part of the reason why I posted this was because I wanted feedback such as yours to improve my list. Thank you for your input. If you have any suggestions as to what weapons could be used in place of the ones I suggested, please, post them right here. I'll probably be updating my list during the week thanks to the new information you provided.

Oh thank you Polish people, or whoever updated the wiki. This is a sczthe usable for combat: http://www.google.sk/imgres?imgurl=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/76/Polish_scythemen_1863.PNG/250px-Polish_scythemen_1863.PNG&imgrefurl;=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_scythe&usg;=__fZEtDS4IV9PIklCFzpDjS75IrSo=&h;=376&w;=250&sz;=86&hl;=sk&start;=4&um;=1&itbs;=1&tbnid;=EWIO75t_k1sWqM:&tbnh;=122&tbnw;=81&prev;=/images%3Fq%3Dwar%2Bscythe%2Bpeasant%2Buprising%26um%3D1%26hl%3Dsk%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:sk:official%26channel%3Ds%26tbs%3Disch:1

The people dressed in robes spreading the myst is misinterpreted. Those people were not plaguemasters, they were the -usually- really low class people (below usual peasantry, homeless citizens in towns) who have been paid by the church based on the speculations of papal court physician Guy de Chaulliac that the plague was a miasma (an evil odour, smoke or aotherwise physical air) that could be countered by smoke from burning, incense, or otherwise nice odors. This was otherwise somewhat accurate as the Bubonic Plague IS transmittable through sneezing and fluids / vapours in the air.

These poor people donned heavy clothing (the mask with the bird head if you probably saw that illustration) and carried the sick to be buried. Perhaps a scythe was carried by some, but it has no application to their function.

The jian is very flexible, unlike the notoriously rigid japanese swords. It is more akin to the modern rapiers and was primarily a stabbing weapon. The only supplement that comes into my mind is the parrying dagger for the rapier. Perhaps chinese had something similar too, but I have not seen such items.

The Netherealm is one Hell for many worlds and cultures and the appearance of the land and the demons and dead people residing there are shaped by the will of Shinnok, who deliberately emulates things from all over Earthrealm, so I see no reason to say Noob Saibot shouldn't look like a western Grim Reaper just because he was from China in his past life, a personality he no longer has or feels any attachment to, I remind you. I'm not sure he dresses himself anyway, since Quan Chi and Shinnok created his Noob identity.

His job is to dress all in black and kill people for the ruler of the afterlife. That technically does make him a Grim Reaper, although not in the strictest mythological "ferries souls to the other side" sense.

And again, I gotta be the "It's fiction!" guy and point out that Rule of Cool trumps whether or not you could actually fight with a scythe in real life.

Everything you just said in that post was ruined by pointing out the "Rule of Cool."

Saying that is like saying, "ignore any legitimate evidence there may be, because it's awesome."

As much as I agree with the sentiment that Noob Siabot should wield a scythe, saying that "because it's cool" feels cheap. And, in my opinion, coolness should never stand in the way of logic - I have a very low threshold for certain types of suspensions of disbelief.

Sorry for making a whole post about this, but the "Rule of Cool" is one of my biggest pet peeves of all time. (Seriously, I can never take Batman Begins seriously. It may be cool that Bruce Wayne is suddenly the most badass ninja at the academy, but it makes absolutely no sense that he's the "new guy" and, yet, also, somehow, capable of kicking the asses of all the other ninjas put together.)

Then may I suggest that you are perhaps not the best person to be making a list about how fictional characters with magical powers would fight?

I mean, if you and Chrome want to talk real world history and martial arts, be my guest, but I was under the impression that this thread was about Mortal Kombat, and the guys at NR Studios do not at all share your low suspension of disbelief threshold.

(P.S. In Begins, Bruce clearly had a great deal of martial arts experience before he joined the League of Shadows, as seen in the prison scene at the beginning of the movie, and his time spent training there was a montage of scenes that could have spanned anywhere from months to years, as he was away from Gotham for nearly a decade total. So that example has nothing to do with Rule of Cool at all.)

This chart is awesome and really easy to read. Just wanted to say that.

But Rule of Cool is as subjective as it can get. I see no corellations between Noob Saibot and the renaissance representation of the antropomorphic death incarnate aside for someone in Midway who decided to give a scythe randomly to a character. It was forced, the only thing they had in common is the color black.

Given the character had 0 personality whatsoever, but still...

I would like to point out that Shinnok is not the ruler of the afterlife (since then the afterlife would be reserved for only those of evil alignment), he is an imprisoned elder god stuck in the netherrealm.

Shinnok currently has absolute rule over the Netherealm, and has the power to release and restore to life anyone within that realm, or to transform the dead, such as Hanzo Hasashi and the Elder Sub-Zero, into creatures such as wraiths and spectres. He's not the absolute authority over death, no, because he has no influence over heaven and those who go there, but he's the closest thing you'll find to it in the Mortal Kombat mythos.

And Noob Saibot kills people for him. Which gives him at the very least superficial similarities to a Grim Reaper.

And "rule of cool" was probably not the best word choice, my point is merely that aesthetics are far, FAR more important in something so heavily entrenched in the sci-fi and fantasy genres as Mortal Kombat is than real world practicality would be.

That's a much better way of putting it. And I agree.

I just hate "rule of cool." Because I've known people who have used it as carte blanche to incorporate their artistic licenses to levels that defy logic. How about this for an example: in Mortal Kombat: Annihilation Sub-Zero is seen flying in one seen. Quite frankly, I think that looked stupid beyond words, however, I'm sure to the director (or at least someone out there) Sub-Zero flying is the "coolest thing ever." However, that, to me, is an example of the "rule of cool" taken too far.

Actually, I think he wasn't flying so much as riding an ice-slide upside down or sideways somehow.

Still looked dumb as hell, I'll grant you that.