* ActingForTwo:
** Creator/KariWahlgren returns as both Kitana and Mileena, who are twins in this timeline.
** Creator/KellyHu voices the playable fighter Li Mei and the nonplayable fighter Madam Bo, while also being the facial model of Li Mei.
** Despite both characters sharing the same body, Creator/JamiesonPrice voices both Ermac and Jerrod.
** Vic Chao reprises both Kenshi Takahashi and Goro from ''Mortal Kombat X''.
** Creator/MaraJunot voices both Sindel and Sareena, as well as Johnny Cage's (ex-)wife Cris.
** Creator/AndrewBowen reprises his role as Johnny Cage and also serves as TheOtherDarrin for Creator/AntonyStarr as Homelander.
* AllStarCast: As per usual, ''Mortal Kombat 1'' contains an impressive roster of voice-acting veterans in its cast. Featuring franchise regulars, Creator/SteveBlum, Creator/KellyHu, Creator/PhilLaMarr, Creator/KariWahlgren, Creator/JenniferHale, Creator/JamiesonPrice, Creator/AndrewMorgado, Creator/MaraJunot, Creator/AndrewBowen, Creator/MatthewYangKing, Vic Chao, Perry Shen, Sunil Malhotra, Creator/IkeAmadi and Creator/TravisWillingham. New to the franchise are Creator/KaijiTang, Creator/DaisukeTsuji, Creator/AlanLee, Creator/NoshirDalal, Creator/CheriseBoothe, Creator/VincentRodriguezIII, Creator/DerekPhillips, Creator/SusanEisenberg, Creator/YuriLowenthal, Creator/CristinaValenzuela, Jacob Craner, and the big names of Creator/MeganFox, Creator/JeanClaudeVanDamme, Creator/JKSimmons AND Creator/JohnCena.
* ApprovalOfGod
** Creator/RobertKirkman gave his [[https://www.pcgamer.com/jk-simmons-will-reprise-his-role-as-omni-man-in-mortal-kombat-1-and-robert-kirkman-could-not-be-more-pumped/ glowing approval]] for Omni-Man as a GuestFighter, having long wanting to have one of his characters in ''Mortal Kombat'' once they started introducing guest fighters.
** Geras' original voice actor, Creator/DaveBMitchell [[https://twitter.com/davebmitchell/status/1702839587259965775 expressed his support]] for Creator/PhilLaMarr taking over as Geras.
** Despite Creator/EdBoon turning down the idea of him being playable in any ''Mortal Kombat'' game, he [[https://x.com/noobde/status/1777559182159274192 notably expressed amusement]] over what the modding community has created for ''Mortal Kombat 1'', including a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iifHknqIxeY mod]] that replaces Scorpion (who, unfortunately, isn't [[Characters/MortalKombatHanzoHasashi Hanzo]] this time around) with Boon himself.
* AuthorsSavingThrow:
** During the game's early "stress test" betas in June, by far the most common criticism was the slow speed of the gameplay, feeling especially sluggish when compared to the game's predecessors. [[https://twitter.com/noobde/status/1687853884054855681 This was swiftly noted by the dev team]], and by the August 2023 build, fighter movement was improved substantially, with dashes becoming much faster and [[LagCancel dash-block cancels]] (a feature not seen since ''VideoGame/MortalKombat9'') being added.
** The debut of Seasonal Fatalities in October 2023 drew immense backlash due to one fatality costing over $10 apiece (1,200 Dragon Krystals), widely considered far too high a price for a single cosmetic in a game that already came with a $70-$110 price tag. NRS got the memo, [[https://twitter.com/MortalKombat/status/1722705646653784290 and in early November, they announced]] that those who already bought the debut Halloween fatality would be receiving the upcoming bundle (including a Thanksgiving and Winter fatalities) entirely for free at no extra cost (further implying that the price of the Fatalities themselves would be lowered).
** Ermac's initial design in the game (namely in the story campaign and promos for the Kombat Pack) had him with his bare face, which was met with a largely negative reception from fans, most of whom really wanted him to retain his "ninja" mask present in most of his previous appearances. Come the announcement trailer for Ermac as a DLC fighter, it was revealed that NRS updated his design by giving him his mask again, which the trailer implicitly highlights was in response to the backlash.
--->'''Reptile''': [[LeaningOnTheFourthWall You've changed since we first met]]!\\
'''Ermac''': [[LeaningOnTheFourthWall We believe for the better!]]
* {{Blooper}}: One story mode cutscene (specifically in Chapter 11) features Sindel confronting Reiko, saying the phrase "Know that it will cost you your life!". Initially, the subtitles mistakenly read "[=MK12_148_154,11=]", the line's ID rather than the actual line itself. This has since been patched.
* CastAsAMask: [[spoiler:Creator/JenniferHale once again voices Kronika, but this time, it's Titan Shang Tsung masquerading as her.]]
* CelebrityVoiceActor:
** Creator/JeanClaudeVanDamme appears as a skin for Johnny Cage.
** Creator/JKSimmons and Creator/JohnCena will appear as [[WesternAnimation/Invincible2021 Omni-Man]] and Series/{{Peacemaker|2022}}. In Simmons' case, he's had a fair bit of experience doing voice acting for video games, such as with ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert3'', ''VideoGame/Portal2'', and ''VideoGame/BaldursGateIII'', which only released the month before ''Mortal Kombat 1'' did.
** Creator/MeganFox not only voices Nitara but is her face model as well.
* ContentLeak:
** The Italian Amazon page for the Premium Edition leaked the downloadable fighters and Kameo Fighters from Kombat Pack 1 ''months'' before the official announcement.
** Aside from the two trailers released at San Diego Comic-Con 2023 that confirmed Li Mei, Tanya, Baraka, and the first Kombat Pack, a third trailer yet to be revealed to the public showed two more characters that will appear in some capacity, later shown to be Motaro and Reiko.
** Pictures of the Nintendo Switch version of the game showed Nitara as a part of the roster before she was officially confirmed.
** Some players were able to acquire physical copies over a week before the game came out and uploaded the entire story mode as well as several fight intro dialogues and character endings.
** Similar to what happened with ''Mortal Kombat 11'' in 2019, players were able to Datamine the Switch version of the game and found data for many unannounced, possible DLC fighters post Kombat Pack 1 [[spoiler: and a potential story expansion.]]
* DevelopmentGag: The end of TheEighties and early TheNineties were the peak of Creator/JeanClaudeVanDamme's career, the planning phases of the very first ''Mortal Kombat'' were very inspired by his movies at the time (especially ''Film/{{Bloodsport}}''), to the point Ed Boon and John Tobias wished Van Damme himself would be a character in their upcoming game; back then, however, what became ''Mortal Kombat'' was just the humble debut entry of a series that had to prove itself so Van Damme was out of their reach, thus the character Johnny Cage was born as a clear stand-in for Van Damme. According to Boon himself during the Summer Game Fest 2023, they tried time and time again over 30 years to get Van Damme into the game in some way or another, always coming up short. Years go by and ''Mortal Kombat'' grew to become one of the most commercially successful gaming franchises in the medium, backed by Warner Bros.; in 2023, ''Mortal Kombat 1'' had the pulling power to get Van Damme to be the Johnny Cage Boon and Tobias once wished is no big deal, so he became a DLC alternate skin for Johnny in this game, with its appearance heavily modeled on the aforementioned ''Bloodsport''.
* DirectedByCastMember: In the Mexican Spanish dub, Alan Fernando Velázquez (Kung Lao) and Betzabé Jara (Kitana and Mileena) are the chosen dubbing directors of the game.
* FakeNationality:
** The Czech Smoke is voiced by American Creator/YuriLowenthal.
** The Asian-resembling demoness Ashrah is voiced by the Jewish-American Creator/SusanEisenberg.
* OrphanedReference: One of Kenshi's post-round taunts has him say [[Film/TheMatrix "Stop trying to hit me, and hit me!"]] which seems to be a benign, if fairly random, reference if not for the fact that Ed Boon was hoping to have Keanu Reeves voice a character, with this being evidence of the character he had in mind.
* TheOtherDarrin: Given the ContinuityReboot of the series, it's only natural:
** English version:
*** Smoke is now voiced by Creator/YuriLowenthal rather than Ken Lally or Andrew Bowen.
*** Raiden is now voiced by Vincent Rodriguez III, taking over from both Creator/RichardEpcar and Creator/TravisWillingham. [[spoiler:As noted below, Thunder God Raiden is a different matter.]]
*** Shang Tsung is now voiced by Creator/AlanLee, replacing his previous post-reboot actors, Creator/AndrewKishino and Creator/CaryHiroyukiTagawa.[[note]]In particular, Lee evokes a ''lot'' of Tagawa's inflections and mannerisms to sound like a new version of the character as a much younger man.[[/note]]
*** Despite Creator/SteveBlum returning as Baraka, Reptile is now voiced by Creator/AndrewMorgado.
*** Rain is now voiced by Creator/NoshirDalal, taking over for Dempsey Pappion.
*** Creator/AntonyStarr confirmed on Instagram that he will not voice [[Series/TheBoys Homelander]] despite providing the face model. Despite initial claims that he would be voiced by Creator/ChrisCox, Homelander will instead be voiced by Creator/AndrewBowen.
*** Creator/IkeAmadi is now the announcer for the game, replacing Creator/JamiesonPrice.
** On the ethnicity side of things when it comes to the recasts:
*** Creator/KaijiTang takes over as the Bi-Han Sub-Zero from Creator/JamiesonPrice.
*** Creator/DaisukeTsuji takes over as Kuai Liang from Creator/SteveBlum, with the character now adopting the Scorpion moniker.
*** Creator/KellyHu voices Li Mei, taking over for Creator/TaraStrong.
*** Despite Creator/JenniferHale [[spoiler:returning as Kronika]], Tanya is now voiced by Creator/CheriseBoothe
*** Geras is now voiced by Creator/PhilLaMarr, replacing Creator/DaveBMitchell.
*** Quan Chi is now voiced by Sean T. Krishnan taking over from Ronald M. Banks.
** Mexican Spanish version:
*** Creator/JoseGilbertoVilchis voices Kuai Liang, now as Scorpion, in the place of Sebastián Llapur, who voiced the Sub-Zero incarnation of the character.
*** Speaking of Sebastián Llapur, he now voices Bi-Han as Sub-Zero in the place of Tommy Rojas from the previous game as Noob Saibot.
*** As a result of Creator/EduardoGarza leaving Pink Noise since 2018, Reptile is now voiced by Creator/ArturoMercadoJr.
*** Because the New Era's Raiden is a mortal, the character is now voiced by Armando Guerrero. [[spoiler:However, Creator/GerardoReyero retains as the godly alternate version of the character.]]
*** While Carlo Vázquez returns as Kenshi, this is not the case for Smoke, as the character is now voiced by Creator/JoseAngelTorres.
*** Betzabé Jara now takes over as both Kitana and Mileena after the passing of Toni Rodríguez.
*** Dave Ramos didn't return as Rain, and therefore, Rafael Escalante now takes over.
*** Li Mei and Sareena are now voiced by Kerygma Flores instead of Susana Moreno and Creator/XochitlUgarte, respectively. In the case of Li Mei, it's due to the character's more mature look and approach.
*** Despite Carla Castañeda returning as the voice of Sindel, Rebeca Gómez takes over as the voice of Tanya.
*** Quan Chi is now voiced by Daniel del Roble instead of José Gilberto Vilchis.
*** [[spoiler:Kronika is now voiced by Gaby Willer, taking over for Irina Índigo.]]
*** [[WesternAnimation/Invincible2021 Omni-Man]] is voiced by Santos Alberto, rather than Creator/HumbertoSolorzano from the [[DuelingDubs Mexican redub]] of the animated show.[[note]]It should be noted, however, that in this particular case, Solorzano ''is'' the replacement for Alberto, not the other way around, since the decision to include Omni-Man, including their respective English and foreign voice actors in the game, was done very earlier before Amazon Prime Video chose to replace the original cast of the Latin Spanish dub, [[DuelingDubs who was originally done in El Salvador]], with one done in Mexico due to the criticisms against that dub, which mean that neither Netherrealm Studios nor the Mexican studio who dubbed the game wasn't aware of Amazon's plans on redoing the dub of the show, nor the one who did the dub of ''WesternAnimation/Invincible2021'' were also aware of Omni-Man being included on [=MK1=] in the very first DLC pack, and that would also mean that Alberto would have been Omni-Man's dub voice in both this game and the show, had Amazon been aware of Netherrealm Studios' plans regarding DLC characters from the beginning.[[/note]]
** Brazilian Portuguese version:
*** Tanya is now voiced by Veridiana Benassi instead of Luciana Baroli.
*** Quan Chi is now voiced by Alexandre Marconato instead of Cláudio Satiro, who passed away in 2022.
*** An interesting case with Scorpion and Sub-Zero: they have the same dubbers for the ''mantle'' of Scorpion and Sub-Zero as in ''X'' and ''11'', but count as Other Darrins for the characters under the masks. Kuai Liang is voiced by Felipe Silze (who voiced Hanzo Hasashi as Scorpion before) instead of Charles Dalla, who is now voicing Bi-Han instead of Ricardo Juarez (who had voiced Bi-Han as Noob Saibot in ''11'').
* PreOrderBonus: Shang Tsung for all platforms, and pre-order beta access to the game for the Platform/XboxSeriesXAndS and Platform/PlayStation5 versions.
* RefittedForSequel: [[RefittedForSequel/MortalKombat Shares a page with the rest of the franchise]].
%% RoleReprise requires a 5-year gap.
* RoleReprise:
** English version:
*** For the first time since ''Mortal Kombat X'', Vic Chao, Parry Shen, and Creator/JamiesonPrice reprised their roles as playable fighters, Kenshi Takahashi, Takeda, and Ermac. Chao even voiced the non-playable turned-Kameo fighter, Goro too as well.
* PromotedFanboy: Raiden's voice actor, Vincent Rodriguez III is a childhood fan of the series.
* PromotedFangirl: [[https://kotaku.com/megan-fox-will-kick-your-ass-at-mortal-kombat-5302247 Megan Fox has been a documented fan of the series for years]]. In this game, she voices Nitara.
* StarMakingRole: For Creator/AlanLee, while he was an unknown voice actor in many dub anime and video games. His role as Shang Tsung would help solidify his career. The same applies to Havik's voice actor, Jacob Craner.
* ThrowItIn: Noah Fleder, who's done motion capture for several characters in addition to being Kenshi's face model, has made certain suggestions on how characters should fight, such as Smoke using a karambit instead of a straight knife he's initially imagined with or Liu Kang putting his hands behind his back during one of his kicking combos.
* TwoVoicesOneCharacter: While Megan Fox voices Nitara's dialogue, the character's grunts in gameplay are performed by Creator/CristinaValenzuela.
* WhatCouldHaveBeen:
** [[https://www.ign.com/articles/mortal-kombat-1s-ed-boon-says-door-not-closed-on-injustice-3 Ed Boon discussed with IGN that]] following the release of ''VideoGame/MortalKombat11'', Creator/{{NetherRealm Studios}} had strongly considered doing another ''Franchise/{{Injustice}}'' sequel first as per their previous pattern of swapping between ''Mortal Kombat'' and ''Injustice'' installments. However, they ended up settling on doing a new ''Mortal Kombat'' due to various internal factors, from pandemic-induced complications to their decision to upgrade their game engine requiring all hands on deck, though Boon insists that ''Injustice 3'' is by no means out of the question for the future.
** The whole reason why [=NetherRealm=] went with the Kameo character mechanic, as revealed by Ed Boon himself in an interview with ''[=PlayStation=] Magazine''. The team originally considered adding modifiers to the characters akin to ''VideoGame/MortalKombatX''[='=]s variation system, but Boon turned it down because he wanted something that could be shared by everyone in the roster. He also turned down the TagTeam mode from ''VideoGame/MortalKombat9'' because, while both the fans and the dev team liked it, it wasn't very well played overall and it was felt that learning two entire movesets was too great a burden for most players. The Kameo character mechanic was seen as a happy medium of both of these ideas.
** In [[https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/mortal-kombat-1-ed-boon-video-game-megan-fox-john-wick-jean-claude-van-damme-1234823513/amp/ an interview with Rolling Stone]], Ed Boon once considered having ''every'' character in the game be voiced by a celebrity. One "pipe dream" Boon wanted was Creator/KeanuReeves in the game, possibly as the voice of Kenshi, but walked that back when considering the allotted budget and availability of Reeves to read the hundreds of lines needed for the game.
** Similarly, Film/JohnWick [[https://www.gamespot.com/articles/john-wick-could-have-been-in-mortal-kombat-1/1100-6517825/ was considered]] as a GuestFighter for the game, but they couldn't pull it off due to licensing issues. Before the game's release, Reeves said in 2021 that he couldn't see either Wick or [[Film/TheMatrix Neo]] as a character in ''Mortal Kombat'' [[note]] As an interesting parallel, Neo was considered as a guest character for ''Injustice 2'' but NRS couldn't get Reeves behind the idea[[/note]].
** Omni-Man was not the first choice Ed Boon had for a Robert Kirkman guest character, as he revealed in a tweet that the first meeting Boon and Kirkman had was to discuss the possibility of [[Franchise/TheWalkingDead Michonne Hawthorne]] being added to the roster. For unknown reasons, she failed to cut, leading to Omni-Man's inclusion.
* YouSoundFamiliar:
** English Version:
*** Both Creator/KellyHu and Creator/PhilLaMarr previously voiced D'Vorah and Kotal Kahn in the past two ''[[VideoGame/MortalKombatX Mortal]] [[VideoGame/MortalKombat11 Kombat]]'' games. Now they're Li Mei and Geras.
*** This isn't the first time Creator/YuriLowenthal is in ''Mortal Kombat''. His first foray into the franchise was voicing Kobra in the direct-to-video animated movie, ''WesternAnimation/MortalKombatLegendsSnowBlind''. Now he's voicing Smoke.
*** The same applies to co-star Creator/CourtenayTaylor who went from voicing Kira in ''Snow Blind'', to Kameo fighter, Janet Cage.
*** Creator/AndrewMorgado voiced Kollector from ''VideoGame/MortalKombat11'', and he's now voicing Reptile.
*** In terms of the sister series ''Franchise/{{Injustice}}'', long-time Franchise/WonderWoman voice actress Creator/SusanEisenberg joins the franchise voicing the demon Ashrah. The same goes to ''WesternAnimation/Injustice2021'' for Creator/DerekPhillips, as he voices Reiko.
** Mexican Spanish Version:
*** Creator/JoseGilbertoVilchis previously voiced Quan Chi in ''VideoGame/MortalKombatX''. Now he's voicing the Kuai Liang incarnation of Scorpion.
*** Sebastián Llapur previously voiced the Kuai Liang incarnation of Sub-Zero in the past two ''[[VideoGame/MortalKombatX Mortal]] [[VideoGame/MortalKombat11 Kombat]]'' games and in ''VideoGame/Injustice2''. In this game, he's voicing the Bi-Han incarnation of the character for the first time.
*** Combined with ActorAllusion, this is the second time Creator/ArturoMercadoJr voices a green-clad character after the Hal Jordan incarnation of Green Lantern in the sister series ''Franchise/{{Injustice}}''. The character he's voicing in question for this game is Reptile.
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