Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.
"Let the cold be your tomb."
With an R-rating, this movie finally gets to replicate the gory violence and dark moments from its source material. And boy, does it earn that rating...
- Sub-Zero. This version of the character was so ruthless and deadly that the heroes save him for last for a reason.
- Introduced 400 years before the events of the movie, his cruelty is shown when he drops the sword he used to kill the servants of the Hasashi household upon encountering Hanzo's wife and son, choosing to freeze them to death and in the case of Hanzo's wife, he impales her through the chest with a giant icicle.
- In the modern day, when sent to kill Cole Young and his family, he starts throwing hail at the restaurant they're eating in, missing them, but hitting several people in the vicinity with hail, possibly wounding or killing them.
- And then there's his fight with Jax, which ends with him beating Jax and freezing both of his arms so that they frost over and blood starts spraying from them, until they eventually shatter. And then to add insult to injury, Sub-Zero pushes Jax off a ledge, leaving him in a bloody heap on the first floor of the building they fought in.
- Hanzo Hasashi's situation in the opening; he goes off to get water only to come back to his house with all of his servants dead and his wife and son frozen in ice by his archenemy. Then, after killing the rest of the assassins and fighting Bi-Han, he's mortally wounded and left to die. But right before he expires, he hears his baby daughter crying and starts crawling over to her— only to die of his wounds. Afterwards, his body is set ablaze by hellfire, turning it into ash, with his soul ending up in the Netherrealm, for over 400 years.
- Reptile's appearance in this film shows how far CGI has evolved since the first MK movie, since now, the character actually looks scary despite being a fully animated creature.
- Nitara getting flown face first into a spinning razor bladed hat stuck in the ground, courtesy of Kung Lao, who ends up covered in blood afterwards.
- As for Kung Lao? Shang Tsung grabs him by the throat and says the infamous dreaded quote: "YOUR SOUL IS MINE!" And it's not cheesy like in the original movie. No, in this one, Shang Tsung's eyes turn pitch black and he gets green veins popping all around his neck as he does the deed, all while Kung Lao turns into a withered husk. The worst part? You see every last horrible second of it.
- Goro's death is nauseating and painful to watch. Cole cuts off one of his right hands, slashes him up the stomach, disemboweling him, and then gets a tonfa stabbed in his head, right through his eye.
- The way Kano and Sonya's fight near the end of the film is set up to heavily resemble a domestic violence situation may disturb some some people who went through that in real life.
- And to end all things, SCORPION'S FATALITY AGAINST SUB-ZERO. Right after Scorpion removes his mask, his face turns into a skull as he mercilessly torches the Lin Kuei warrior with his iconic hellfire breath. And we get some disturbing shots of Bi-Han being turned into a disgustingly charred corpse. That’s not to say he didn’t deserve it, but holy hell is it brutal.
