History NightmareFuel / MortalKombat

* ''NightmareFuel/MortalKombat1''

[[caption-width-right:350: "Save me the eyes."]]

!![[center: Main games: [[NightmareFuel/MortalKombat1 MK1]] | [[NightmareFuel/MortalKombatII MK2]] | [[NightmareFuel/MortalKombat3 MK3]] | [[NightmareFuel/MortalKombat4 MK4]] | [[NightmareFuel/MortalKombatDeadlyAlliance Deadly Alliance]] | [[NightmareFuel/MortalKombatDeception Deception]] | [[NightmareFuel/MortalKombatArmageddon Armageddon]] | [[NightmareFuel/MortalKombat9 MK9]] | [[NightmareFuel/MortalKombatX MKX]] | [[NightmareFuel/MortalKombat11 MK11]]\\
[-Spinoffs: [[NightmareFuel/MortalKombatMythologiesSubZero MKM: Sub-Zero]] | [[NightmareFuel/MortalKombatSpecialForces Special Forces]] | [[NightmareFuel/MortalKombatShaolinMonks Shaolin Monks]] | [[NightmareFuel/MortalKombatVsDCUniverse MK vs. DC Universe]]\\
Non-videogame media: [[NightmareFuel/MortalKombatTheMovie Mortal Kombat: The Movie]] | [[NightmareFuel/MortalKombatTheJourneyBegins The Journey Begins]] | [[NightmareFuel/MortalKombatAnnihilation Annihilation]] | [[NightmareFuel/MortalKombatConquest Conquest]] | [[NightmareFuel/MortalKombatDefendersOfTheRealm Defenders Of The Realm]] | [[NightmareFuel/MalibuComicsMortalKombat Malibu Comics]] | [[NightmareFuel/MortalKombatLegacy Legacy]] | [[NightmareFuel/MortalKombatRebirth Rebirth]] | [[NightmareFuel/MortalKombat2021 2021 Movie]]-]]]
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[[caption-width-right:350: Meet Baraka!]]

!![[center: Main games: [[NightmareFuel/MortalKombat1 MK1]] | [[NightmareFuel/MortalKombat2 MK2]] | [[NightmareFuel/MortalKombat3 MK3]] | [[NightmareFuel/MortalKombat4 MK4]] | [[NightmareFuel/MortalKombatDeadlyAlliance Deadly Alliance]] | [[NightmareFuel/MortalKombatDeception Deception]] | [[NightmareFuel/MortalKombatArmageddon Armageddon]] | [[NightmareFuel/MortalKombat9 MK9]] | [[NightmareFuel/MortalKombatX MKX]] | [[NightmareFuel/MortalKombat11 MK11]]\\

* ''NightmareFuel/MortalKombat2''

Non-videogame media: [[NightmareFuel/MortalKombatTheMovie Mortal Kombat: The Movie]] | [[NightmareFuel/MortalKombatTheJourneyBegins The Journey Begins]] | [[NightmareFuel/MortalKombatAnnihilation Annihilation]] | [[NightmareFuel/MortalKombatConquest Conquest]] | [[NightmareFuel/MortalKombatDefendersOfTheRealm Defenders Of The Realm]] | [[NightmareFuel/MalibuComicsMortalKombat Malibu Comics]] | [[NightmareFuel/MortalKombatLegacy Legacy]] | [[NightmareFuel/MortalKombatRebirth Rebirth]]-]]]

!''VideoGame/MortalKombat''
* Sub-Zero's infamous spine rip fatality, which contributed to the creation of the ESRB (the American content ratings system for video and computer games).
* Kano [[BeatStillMyHeart rips your heart out]].
* Scorpion rips off his mask to reveal that his head is nothing but a skull, shortly before ''burning you to cinders''.
* The Bottom of the Pit in the uncensored versions is littered with impaled corpses and severed heads stuck on spikes. Not a fun place to visit for many reasons.

!''VideoGame/MortalKombat2''
* The Pit II's [[EverythingTryingToKillYou stage fatality]], more frightening than the first. Your character uppercuts the opponent off of a bridge from a tall height, and then the view the player is given transitions from the usual side-on view to a top-down view of the victim flailing their arms about while accelerating towards the ground, then shattering their spines with a loud "CRUNCH!" when they hit the jagged rocks below.
* Scorpion's "breathing fire at his opponent" fatality as portrayed in this game. When he performs the fatality and his opponent is reduced to a pile of bones on the ground[=/=]floor, said bones are still glowing from whatever is left of the fire.
* The [[LostWoods Living Forest]] stage features a dark forest filled with live trees. The trees have dark soulless eyes, unsettling looks on their faces like they want to eat you alive, and will often groan while making a horrific facial expression. Some trees are just stuck in a horrific facial expression. There are also corpses strewn about that have apparently been killed by the trees.
* Baraka is a creepy-looking character, especially when he does his ''VideoGame/MortalKombat2'' victory pose when he turns to the screen, bows his head and looks up at the screen.
* Mileena. Body of an intoxicatingly beautiful woman, jaws like a bear trap, skills of a deadly warrior. Plus, add in her [[PsychopathicManchild insane, almost childlike personality]] and you have one of the most chilling (and [[NightmareFetishist popular]]) characters in the ''Mortal Kombat'' series. Her Fatalities are especially horrible because several of them (whilst still over-the-top), tap into the PrimalFear of being EatenAlive, whilst emphasizing just how crazy she is. "Man Eater" has her cartoonishly suck up her opponent like a string of spaghetti before puking bones/gore across the stage. "Ferocious Bite" has her bite into her victim's neck and then rip their head off with her teeth. "Be Mine" and "Face Feast" have her tear off their head and nosily chew chunks off of it before throwing it away. Finally, "Tasty Treat" has her straddle her opponent and then rip open their midriff so she can eat their living organs out of their torso.

!''VideoGame/MortalKombat3''
* Sheeva's fatality. She strips you to the bone, skin first, with a blood-curdling scream.
* Cyrax's [[DownerEnding ending]] has him stuck in the desert, buried up to his waist, [[AndIMustScream fully functional but unable to move]].
* A lot of the imagery surrounding Outworld's merging with Earth is pretty nightmarish, especially the blood red vortex above Kahn's tower.
* Kabal's fatality, in which he screams at the screen, showing his [[NightmareFace horrifying true face]], and then literally scares the foe to death. The ''Mortal Kombat Trilogy'' [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJQ32DmdhZM version]] has a much nightmarish sounding scream, and when he screams at the screen, his head was a little closer.
* Scorpion's fatality in ultimate. You're dragged into hell and beaten to horrific, off-screen death by a massive army of his clones. The PsychoStrings do not help.

!''VideoGame/MortalKombat4''
* Sub-Zero's ending, specifically when Quan Chi's head rolls right in front of the camera after being blown up by Scorpion.
* Reptile has a fatality in which he gnaws the skin off your head.
* Meat. A skinless living corpse clad [[FanDisservice only in a thong]] with a dangling eye and blood oozing everywhere.
* [[HaveANiceDeath The]] GameOver [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts-i3D8GNuw sequence.]] It's not the [[ForegoneConclusion inevitable impact with the ground]]. It's the set-up, especially the music, what really drives the point it home. Five seconds of [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EB_GI7ATE-w this]] are more than enough to make you desperate to pop another quarter or to beg the character to just die already. It doesn't help that in the arcade version of the game, the well darkens slightly as the chosen character is fated to make impact unless you pay up.
* This game had a special type of grab called "Bone Breakers", which meant grabbing an opponent's limb and cracking it at the elbow or knee (with the knee being especially gruesome by bending the opponent's knee ''backwards''). SickeningCrunch obligatory, obviously.

!''VideoGame/MortalKombatDeadlyAlliance''
* Drahmin, who appears to be a muscular corpse with flies buzzing around him, is quite disconcerting.
%% * Li Mei's ending is horrifying. Especially since it turned out to be canon.

!''VideoGame/MortalKombatDeception''
* Zombie Liu Kang's Possession fatality, later inherited by Shang Tsung. He becomes a light, enters your body, and forces you to rip off your own head, revealing his own head under it.
* Mileena manages to finally replace Kitana and nobody is the least bit suspicious, just imagine what would have happened to Edenia if that had been allowed to continue. And her veil is see-through, which means you can see her Tarkatan maw ''at all times''! Makes you wonder how [[FailedASpotCheck no one ever noticed that upon close inspection]].
* Dark Raiden. The caring and compassionate thunder god of the past is gone and has been replaced by a merciless and cold-hearted {{jerkass}} who is quickly [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPTxwTHX8Fs growing tired of humanity]].
* Havik, to some extent. Take his 'Human Pencil Sharpener' fatality. It's bad enough to have a dude with a skull face eating your arms, but then to puke up your blood afterwards is just awful! [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtzG1ijpI4E/ See for yourself.]]
* While relatively mundane in execution, Sub-Zero's "Chest Stomp" Fatality gains a new level of horror as it's one of the only Fatalities in the whole series where the victim audibly pleads for their life. To wit, Subbie [[LiterallyShatteredLives freezes, then shatters off]] his opponents legs, then stares menacingly down at his foe as they crawl backwards, the whole time begging him not to kill them as he [[UnflinchingWalk ominously advances.]] For most characters, it's a fairly humorously hammy chain of [[BigNo Big No's]], but Mileena sounds genuine enough to evoke images of a helpless woman cornered at the bottom of a dark alley.

!''VideoGame/MortalKombatShaolinMonks''
* In the recreation of the Living Forest from ''[=MK2=]'', it's possible to throw your enemies to the trees. They can also throw you in order to be eaten alive by those trees if your opponents do the stage fatality on you - and there are corpses hanging from the branches... which struggle to get free, and then abruptly slacken!

!''VideoGame/MortalKombat9''
* When Ed Boon said that this would be the bloodiest game of the series, he wasn't making stuff up. The amount of material is enough to guarantee this game [[NightmareFuel/MortalKombat9 its own page]].

!''VideoGame/MortalKombatX''
* Like the previous entry, the game has enough material to warrant [[NightmareFuel/MortalKombatX a separate page]].

!''VideoGame/MortalKombat11''
* The Fatalities are no slouches in this entry, and the way the animations slow down and stop on the final blow only ups the pain factor.
** Baraka rips off the opponent's face, then the front of their skull. Then he tears out their brain and channels the spirit of Mileena by [[BrainFood taking a big chomp out of it]].
** Skarlet forces blood out of her opponent, then hardens it into spears and plunges them into their body. One becomes lodged in their head, which she thrusts all the way through, [[EyeScream spearing their eye in the process]].
** Not skimping out on brutal ways to kill her oppenents, Skarlet also can pump her blood right into her victim's heart, where it visibly changes color before it cannot take any more and explodes.
* The story prologue shows Raiden [[ElectricTorture slowly and brutally electrifying Shinnok]] for no reason other than to punish the fallen Elder God. Despite being [[CompleteImmortality completely immortal]], it's agonizing and he's not even interrogating him, he's just making him suffer. Shinnok is no saint but Raiden just shocking him over and over knowing that he'll never die from it is just cruel...and ''then'' he decapitates his [[AndIMustScream ever-living head]] to present to the Netherrealm rulers as his warning, shown in TheStinger to ''X''.

** However, there is NightmareRetardant in the form of the famous "Toasty!" sometimes playing after the enemy is reduced to bones.

* The [[LostWoods Living Forest]] stage features a dark forest filled with live trees. The trees have dark soulless eyes, unsettling looks on their faces like they want to eat you alive, and will often groan while making a horrific facial expression. Some trees are just stuck in a horrific facial expression. There are also corpses strewn about that have apparently been killed by the trees. [[FreezeFrameBonus Often one of the game's characters will appear, sneaking a peak at the fight from behind one of the trees in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment.]] According to one comic, the Living Forest originated from Edenia, and it used to be called the '''Laughing''' Forest, as the trees were very jolly and full of mirth.

* Mileena. Body of an intoxicatingly beautiful woman, jaws like a bear trap, skills of a deadly warrior. Plus, add in her [[PsychopathicManchild insane, almost childlike personality]] and you have one of the most chilling (and [[NightmareFetishist popular]]) characters in the ''Mortal Kombat'' series.
** Mileena's Fatalities are especially horrible because several of them (whilst still over-the-top), tap into PrimalFears of being EatenAlive, whilst emphasizing just how crazy she is. "Man Eater" has her cartoonishly suck up her opponent like a string of spaghetti before puking bones/gore across the stage. "Ferocious Bite" has her bite into her victim's neck and then rip their head off with her teeth. "Be Mine" and "Face Feast" have her tear off their head and nosily chew chunks off of it before throwing it away. Finally, "Tasty Treat" has her straddle her opponent and then rip open their midriff so she can eat their living organs out of their torso.

* Sheeva's fatality. She strips you to the bone, skin first!
** That blood-curdling scream.
* Kano rips your entire goddamn skeleton out instead of just your heart.
* Smoke, in one of his fatalities, [[TakingYouWithMe kills himself]]. [[EarthShatteringKaboom AND THE ENTIRE PLANET WITH HIM.]]
* Cyrax's [[DownerEnding ending]] has him [[spoiler:stuck in the desert, buried up to his waist, [[AndIMustScream fully functional but unable to move]]]].
** He will be in the background even if he is in use.

* Sub-Zero's ending, specifically when [[spoiler:Quan Chi's head rolls right in front of the camera after being blown up by Scorpion.]]

* Li Mei's ending is horrifying. Especially since it turned out to be canon.

* [[http://mkw.mortalkombatonline.com/mkd/liukang/ Zombie Liu Kang]]
** His Possession fatality, later inherited by Shang Tsung. He becomes a light, enters your body, and forces you to rip off your own head, revealing his own head under it.
*** Even worse, doing this on Shujinko, depending on the console, will wield one of two occurrences. On the [=PS2=], PSP, and [=GameCube=] versions, after Liu Kang forces Shujinko to rip off his own head, Liu Kang's own head does not appear. On the Xbox version, the moment he rips off his head, the game freezes with a [[JumpScare sudden, loud buzzing noise]] that is actually quite common for the console in general when it experiences errors like this.
*** However, this can be seen as a SugarWiki/{{Funny Moment|s}} when this fatality is performed on female Kombatants.
* Mileena manages to finally replace Kitana and nobody is the least bit suspicious, just imagine what would have happened to Edenia if that had been allowed to continue.
** And her veil is see-through, which means you can see her Tarkatan maw ''at all times''! Makes you wonder how [[FailedASpotCheck no one ever noticed that upon close inspection]].

!''VideoGame/MortalKombatArmageddon''
* Blaze's [[https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/mkwikia/images/b/b5/HUD_IMAGE31.png boss form]] is very menacing, and is easily one of the largest and tallest characters in the game, along with Moloch and Onaga. Considering that he is a hulking MagmaMan, it really begs the question as to how ''any'' kombatant would ever be able to challenge him and live, or [[FridgeLogic even be able to punch him without having their skin melt right off]].

** Scorpion wraps his superheated spear's chain around his opponent vertically, then uses his teleporting powers to [[HalfTheManHeUsedToBe rip them in half]].
** Scorpion's second fatality harkens to ''MKX'' where he first burns out his opponent's midsection, then decapitates them and throwing his spear through the back of their head and out their mouth. The look of shock in his victim's eyes makes it all the more frightening.
** It's not Sub-Zero without an assault on the spinal column, which he accomplishes this time by skewering his opponent upside-down on an ice clone's spear, then plunging his hand into their body and ripping it out with their head still attached.
** Sub-Zero's other Fatality has him freeze his opponent's body, save for their head, which he lops off with an ice axe. Then to assert his superiority, he picks up his victim's disembodied head, freezes it over, then shatters it with a single punch.
** Sonya calls in "air support", with a helicopter hovering above her opponent, then shoots her opponent into the air repeatedly until [[HelicopterBlender the chopper's blades make a smoothie out of her foe]].

** Geras punches his opponent twice, each time hard enough to leave massive holes in their chest. Then he teleports behind them and open-palm strikes them in the back of their head hard enough to ''send their brain flying out the front''.
* In lieu of the previous games' X-Ray Moves are Fatal Blows. You can only land them once per match, but boy do they hurt!
** Scorpion: Sword slashes, daggers through the eyes, kick in the air, yank back down and kicks daggers into the skull before throwing opponent onto the ground, forcing daggers out the back of the head.
** Sub-Zero: Slashes with two ice axes, kicks opponent down, third ice axe to the face, also used to life opponent into the air and slam them back down.
** Baraka: Stab through torso with arm blade, second stab through skull, then runs opponent through with a war flag's staff.
** Raiden: Staff strikes, thrusts spear through face, finish with gut stab.
** Skarlet: Repeated stabs with dagger, slice from gut to neck, uses opponent's blood to make a scythe to skewer them with, finish with blood spear through the mouth.
** Sonya Blade: NoHoldsBarredBeatdown, wrist blaster-empowered gut punch, riddles opponent with bullets from a sentry turret with a final shot to the face, finish with face stomp.
** Geras: Uppercuts opponent into air, reverses time until they are back on the ground, multiple punches and sword slashes before punching them across the arena.
* Brutalities are back, and just as [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin brutal]] as before, if not moreso! So far, the only one shown is Scorpion knocking his opponent's head off.

** It's not Sub-Zero without an assault on the spinal column, which he accomplishes this time by freezing his opponent, suspending them upside-down, then plunging his hand into their body and ripping it out.