Nightmare Fuel / Mortal Kombat X

And now they can actually attack you!

Mortal Kombat 9 horrified players by being the bloodiest one yet. What they didn't know was that the following round of carnage would get even messier.

WARNING: As per Nightmare Fuel policy, all spoilers are unmarked!

---

Fatalities

Mortal Kombat X is definitely a lot Bloodier and Gorier than 9, and what better way to demonstrate that than with the new range of Finishing Moves, some of which are just downright sadistic (they died about three moves back, you're just screwing with the corpse by the end). Not particularly helped by the incredibly gruesome sound design decisions. And, just for that extra shock value, for most of them the camera keeps focusing on the deceased opponent as they die the most Cruel and Unusual Death imaginable. Viewer discretion is most certainly advised…

• In Scorpion's "Stop Ahead", he burns a hole into his opponent's chest, causing the heart to drop down into said hole, then they slump over for an entire face removal by sword; the face slides off first, then the brain flops out next, all while their tongue twitches all over, all visible in its gory glory.
• Quan Chi uses his mind control powers for "Mind Game" to make the opponent walk into a sword that just so happens to be at the same height as their mouth, impaling them straight through the head. You can hear the blade grinding against flesh and bone for extra Squick value. He then uses his telekinesis to lift the opponent up while keeping the sword in place, slicing them in half (Kung Lao's Diamond Cutter anyone?). He then slams them down, cutting through the top of the head to complete the bisection.
  • In what arguably crosses over into CMoF territory, when showing the game in his Clueless Gamer segment, Conan O'Brien was so horrified with this one that he immediately assumed the fetal position, complete with sucking his thumb (starts at 5:59-6:32, but play from 5:50 to see the Fatality).
• Ermac's fatality "Inner Workings" has him telekinetically lift his opponent and twist them around with several popping/crunching sounds. He then straightens them out again and then pulls most of their digestive tract through their mouth so far that the stomach is on the far side of Ermac. He ends with crushing the stomach into a bloody ball and throwing it to the ground, Ermac staring at the remains with a pleased expression while the body still hovers in the background with intestines hanging from the mouth.
• Mileena's "Tasty Treat" is just eaugh - she foregoes using her sais and teeth and just plain tears apart her opponent with her bare hands. She then hunches over, scoops up the entrails with her hands and begins to devour them.
• Kenshi's "My Puppet" is incredibly cringe worthy. He telekinetically pushes the opponent's ribcage out through their back and dangles them like a puppet from the tendons attached to each of their limbs. He then uses Sento to cut through the tendons, which causes the opponent to crash to the floor in a heap along with the ribcage. The opponent shuddering and emitting cries of pain, though, is what makes this finishing move truly unnerving.
• Johnny Cage's "Little Improv", where he knocks the opponent onto their face, grabs the back of their head and starts smashing them into the ground, getting faster and faster with his shadow power. When he stops to observe his handiwork, the horrible gurgling noise the victim makes implies they're barely conscious even when their face is reduced to a mangled mess you can only charitably call an exposed skull before he just smashes their head into the dirt one last time.
• Jax's "Jax the Ribber" is just NUH-UH! He starts off with lifting the opponent up by the neck and ripping out their ribs and shoving them into their temple, whereafter he performs a Neck Snap on the already-suffering opponent. The opponent can barely breathe before they fall dead on the ground.
• Unsurprisingly, Leatherface has some VERY agonizing fatalities. Special mention goes to his "Hook And Sinker", where he knocks the opponent out with a hammer, puts a meat hook underneath their chin and cuts them in half at the waist while they're still alive. The fact that their guts fall flat on the ground doesn't help one bit.

Story Mode and comics

• In issue #2 of the comics, Forrest Fox gets possessed by Havik and cuts his own face off!◊
• Issue #4 involves Cassie Cage and Jacqui finding out that the former gets herself into a death match at an adult's club. Cassie's reaction is a simple "F.M.L" and her opponent? None other than Frost. The horror on Jacqui's face seals the deal to what her best friend got herself into.
• Issue #6 has Kotal Kahn (who surprisingly isn't that bad a guy, all things considered) messily crushing the skulls of two Spanish soldiers who were threatening a young Amazon girl. He then goes on to defend the Amazon people, and earns his title as "Blood God" by gruesome means (he regularly drinks the blood of his enemies) and then it all goes to pot when, after returning from a visit to Outworld, he discovers to his horror that the Amazon tribe has been eradicated - they couldn't deal with the viruses and diseases in the Spanish blood. Oh, and at one point he punches a guy's face off.
• Issue #16 of the comics shows exactly how Sub-Zero became uncybersised: Quan Chi used his magic to tear him into nothing but bones and organs, remaking him from that.
• The curse of the Kamidogu, as explained by Kano: anyone wounded by those daggers can be possessed by a demon (like what happened to Fox) and the only way to free them of it is to kill the possessed. Doesn't help that in the end of Issue #3, said demon took over Raiden's body and started to fight Scorpion. Of course, Kano was lying, as shown later with how Raiden deals with the situation of his own blood corruption by bleeding the corruption out of the victim, but it doesn't help by saying what was actually the cause of said corruption to the Kamidogu: Havik.
  • When Reiko uses the dagger on himself, it initially seems to deify him into a blood god due to a prophecy, and prevents him from being killed by conventional means (even with a team-up of Kotal Kahn, Mileena and Ermac), but he soon realizes something is wrong when he isn't sated by the blood of over 100 prisoners. Suddenly, his chest bursts open and his face starts to melt. As he is wasting away, Havik reveals that he was never meant to be a god, but rather a vessel for one, and plunges his thumbs into Reiko's eye sockets and tears out his brain, which somehow was containing Shinnok's amulet.
• After Reiko manages to kill D'vorah, it doesn't take long before the sands around the area begin to echo with tiny whispers of "This one? This one?" as the Red Dragon squad sent to clean up after the mess and take prisoners witnesses a shifting figure rising from the beach. Their attempts to burn it are met with a horde of voracious Outworld bees that tunnel in and out of their body as D'vorah pulls herself back together. D'vorah is no mere insectoid; She's a living hive and can be reassembled as needed.
• D'Vorah brutally executing Mileena at the end of Chapter 6. She kisses Mileena and regurgitates flesh-eating insects down her throat that eat all of her face as Mileena delivers an ABSOLUTELY bloodcurdling scream, and afterwards, we're treated a nice, absolutely nauseating Gross-Up Close-Up of Mileena's bloody skull as blood pools on the surface. It overall goes on par with the infamous face melt scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark in terms of disturbing content, if someone wonders.
  • And if that wasn't enough, this all happens while Cassie and her team are watching this happen before their very eyes, and understandably, we clearly see both Cassie and Jacqui react in absolute horror and disgust. And this is more than enough to show that these two girls will probably be permanently haunted by this traumatizing image for quite possibly the rest of their lives. There's a very good reason why the quote said by Cassie after the execution is on the Nausea Fuel main page after all.
    • Even in the sequel, Cassie still remembers. You can clearly tell the poor girl has PTSD because of that gruesome incident...
    Mileena: Remember me, Cassandra?
    Cassie Cage: Seriously? Your death still gives me nightmares!
    Mileena: Yours will not trouble me at all.
    • Also, terrifying? The way Mileena says, "Remember me, Cassandra?", much like this scene. And not helping matters is the horrifying implications behind how Jacqui would react at the exact same question...
• Quan-Chi learned the hard way that you never mess with Scorpion and get away with it in Chapter 9. After Hanzo wrestled with the Special Forces in order to release Quan Chi from his cell in order to execute him, he tossed the sorcerer around like a rag doll, defeated him in combat, and made the sorcerer meet his fate when he decapitated him. However, he let Shinnok loose and with Quan Chi's death, most of the fallen warriors remained revenants.
• Although Kung Jin finally gets to see Kung Lao again, he learns the hard way that his cousin was revived as a revenant.
  Kung Jin: Kung Lao... To see him like this...
• The way Dark Raiden tosses Shinnok's severed, but still-living head to the floor. It seems that he must have done Cold-Blooded Torture in an exceptionally brutal and sadistic manner on the fallen Elder God before reducing him to a mere living head, and seems to have gotten genuine satisfaction by torturing his Arch-Enemy. Even the look on Shinnok's battered face seems to indicate that he was terrified of what Raiden did to him.
  • The story prologue for Mortal Kombat 11 shows that he did and it was savage. Shocking Shinnok repeatedly knowing he will never kill the former Elder God but causing him pain with every surge. It serves no end, there is no interrogation or gain for Raiden, just unfettered brutality. Dark Raiden even briefly gives a Psychotic Smirk before beheading him.

Arcade Endings

• Story Mode ends with Cassie Cage's victory over Shinnok and Raiden seemingly hanging on by a thread... until we next see him reclaiming his dreaded Dark Raiden mantle and warning the new Netherrealm rulers (Liu Kang and Kitana) to not threaten Earthrealm lest they end up like the beheaded Shinnok or worse. With Story Mode out of the way several people have tackled the tower and...they found some very unnerving things.
  • Jax's ending has him take over for a hospitalized Johnny and later deflect bullets away from Cassie Cage's group against Erron Black's surprise attack (who all die in Erron Black's own ending). Erron Black does not appear to make it out of the scuffle alive...and Jax slips into shock.
  • Sonya's ending has her fall asleep and have a nightmare about Kano forcing her to choose between either Jax or Cassie. She chooses Cassie and Jax bites it. She is awoken from her nightmare by a recovered Johnny Cage only for him to tell her that Jax was killed from an assassin's bullet.
  • Scorpion's ending shows us that he regretted letting his vengeance get the better of him again, nearly compromising the realms' safety. He tries to invoke Hara-Kiri to atone for this yet Raiden (very likely to be Dark Raiden at this time) has him and his Shirai Ryu become infused with a portion of the purified Jinsei instead, transforming them into Earthrealm's protectors.
  • Raiden's ending has him question whether defending Earthrealm passively is such a good idea, so he decides to mobilize a force against those who would threaten Earthrealm (enlisting the Shirai Ryu in his services for one) and he leads an attack against Outworld, conquering it. It's implied that this took place before or at the start of his transformation into Dark Raiden.
  • Quan Chi's ending appears as if he either somehow survived Hanzo's assassination or the Elder Gods resurrected him. While Shinnok was no longer a threat Quan Chi inadvertently caused another to take his place. The Elder Gods then destroyed all free will from within Quan Chi and set him on a path to kill this new being. It's Raiden.
  • Kotal Kahn's ending has his realm conquered by Raiden in a surprise attack. The desperate emperor invokes the Elder Gods to give him a chance to hold on to his sovereignty and Mortal Kombat begins anew, just like it had done before with Raiden against Shao Kahn's forces. Erron Black is possibly dead, Reptile is in Earthrealm with his kin and he's staying with them (intending to retake their lost home), Ferra's probably not coming back to serve Kotal Kahn (Torr's dead and she's the new brute to a new rider), and it turns out one of Ermac's souls is Shang Tsung, who separated himself from the others and absorbed the other souls Ermac is composed of. Chances are Kotal Kahn's probably, royally screwed. Or maybe not...
  • Jacqui's ending has her attack Kotal Kahn as he's discovering a glowing crystal skull. Jacqui ambushes him and steals the skull from him. Jacqui's praised for possibly preventing something disastrous, but she suspects that it was all according to Kotal Kahn's plans. We see tentacle-like things coming out of the skull and either Jacqui's eyes are glowing the same color of the skull or it's (hopefully) the glow of the skull reflecting off onto her eyes.
  • Liu Kang's ending has him wander the Netherrealm and subsequently beat the demons into submission. He later decides that he's going to try the ruling a realm thing a spin, and after the Netherrealm's his it quickly spirals into a desire to conquer all realms.
  • Kitana's ending has her see herself Queen of Edenia, freed from Shao Kahn. She united the realms against Shao Kahn during the Aftermath of Armageddon where Raiden did not interfere, and peace was achieved. It turned out that it was all a vision; she was a revenant in Hell and came to despise Raiden for his perceived meddling with the timeline. Oh, and the person giving her the vision was a figure in the guise of her deceased best friend Jade. It's implied that from Jade's own Ladder ending from 9 and her current actions here that it's not actually Jade, but the woman who hijacked her body with the intent of Re-imagining Shao Kahn's demise, and subsequently changing the future.
  • Cassie Cage's ending has Raiden order her to find and kill the resurrected Shang Tsung, and she doesn't object. She finds her target and beats him within an inch of his life. As he lays dying, he tells her that he's not Shang Tsung, but Shujinko.
  • Kano's ending has him find a new pupil and teach him in the ways of the Black Dragon to keep it alive after he's passed. It looks like it's working, and the new recruit in question? His own son.
  • Mileena's ending has her spirit awake in Shang Tsung's flesh pits, coupled with many perfect replicas of her doing so at the same time. Hive Mind and Me's a Crowd ensues as the Mileenas bide their time and plot vengeance. It also mentioned a Greater-Scope Villain who was behind her awakening, and if Ermac and Erron Black's endings are any possible indication, said Greater-Scope Villain may be the revived Shang Tsung.
  • Erron Black's ending shows a previous flashback of receiving a reward from Shang Tsung, the reward stated to slow down his aging. We cut to where Jax's ending starts out, only for him to kill everybody with cobra revolvers.
  • Ermac's ending has him wandering Shao Kahn's abandoned fortress lured in by a voice calling to him...only to end up cut open by a revived Shang Tsung, who absorbs every last soul that makes Ermac. Shang Tsung alive plus every last Ermac soul can only equal a horrifically powered up Shang.
  • D'Vorah's ending shows her enslaving her former master, Shinnok, and using him as a hive for her own larvae; they then absorb the godlike power within him, and burst forward as super-powered Kytinn, which spread across the realms, bringing power and destruction to D'Vorah, as their queen.
  • The Predator's ending depicts it attaining and analyzing Shinnok's amulet to learn about sorcery, and then using this newfound power to aid in the great hunt. The use of magic in addition to its advanced technology makes it completely unstoppable, as it slaughters mortal kombatants and deities alike with little-to-no effort, becoming known as the Apex Predator in the process.
  • The Alien proceeds to capture various Outworld species and causes the hive to explode in population, ending with a Queen spawned. Kotal Kahn desperately attempts to take out the hive, but fails, ushering in a new era of prosperity for the Aliens... and one of tyranny and fear for everyone else.
  • Leatherface defeats Shinnok and decides to go after his crush, Cassie. To get to her, he mows down lots of Special Forces Troops — and judging from the sound effects, Takeda and Jacqui — right before offering Shinnok's face to her as a present. Needless to say, she refuses. Leatherface then kills her, and gives the meat he gathered from the bodies to his brother, Drayton, to make chili. It finishes with him setting to work on making Cassie's face into a new mask, rationalising that "if she wouldn't be his girlfriend, she could still be his in other ways". The final accompanying shot of Leatherface's hands holding up Cassie's bloody, peeled-off face to the camera is especially harrowing.
  • Jason's ending tells of him carving a bloody swathe of destruction through the world, indiscriminately slaughtering Earthrealmer and Outworlder alike and mentioning his body count to be in the hundreds. Meanwhile, Liu Kang, now the ruler of the Netherrealm, sees the potential in having such a powerful, immortal killer at his service for Konquest. He draws Jason into the Netherrealm, and offers the revenant an endless supply of victims to slaughter in return for his allegiance. Jason really doesn't take kindly to the offer, responding by gutting Liu Kang and strangling him to death with his own intestines.
  • Triborg's ending shows him raiding the S-F base after Shinnok's death for the confiscated Cyber Lin Kuei data, killing Cassie, Sonya, and anyone else who tried to stand in its way, then formed the Tekunin by using the saved brain waves of all his Lin Kuei brothers and sisters then used S-F supplies to create bodies for everyone.
  • Shinnok's ending shows him succeeding in his war against the Elder Gods, fusing everything into The One Being and destroying all reality. Surpisingly, this is not connected to anything.
  • The kicker about the above is that many of them appear to work like a puzzle piece, putting the whole picture together and occurring after Story Mode, or at least right after Shinnok is defeated. If all of the above is true then shit is really starting to hit the fan now, more than it already was.

Other

• It's rather dark to consider the sheer amount of Finishing Move potential between parent and child: Takeda and Kenshi, Jacqui and Jax, and Cassie and both of her parents. While this isn't necessarily new (Sindel and Kitana have been in the same game before), it's more unsettling in this case because none of these characters are enemies of one another. And if that isn't enough, characters also interact with each other before every battle. Johnny and Cassie can engage in friendly banter before viciously killing each other.
• Creepy scenarios implied by pre-match dialogue:
  • Shang Tsung disguising himself as Chameleon or a second Reptile.
  • A second Kenshi (or a close impersonator) murdering Kenshi's wife and returning to taunt him over it before death.
  • Ermac being in possession of the deceased Shao Kahn's soul.
  • Sub-Zero's Ice Klones coming to life (and they're not jolly souls like ol' Frosty).
  • Kano (forcibly) collecting the various kombatants' weapons.
  • Multiple Kanos and Mileenas running around, much to Kano's dismay and chargin.
  • Characters from the original MK1-MKA timeline crossing to the new timeline, such as Shinnok fighting his pyramid-empowered Armageddon clone or Sonya battling her O.I.A.-self from that timeline.
  • Shinnok taking interest in the Horror villains.
  • The mirror matches between Raiden tell a lot of different scenarios.
    • Changes to the timeline resulting in a Raiden hailing from Chaosrealm.
    • Another Raiden traveling through time to kombat his counterpart, potentially endangering all of reality.
    • A mysterious, shapeshifting being with many names and faces taking the form of Raiden.
• Once again, the Krypt features jumpscares that will come out and scare the player. However this time, the monsters are fully-animated, in your face and will actually attack you. Suddenly the monster from MK9 doesn't seem so bad. The only upside is that unlike in MK9, the Jump Scares are not random and are actually preset. Once you kill a wolf/spider/monster, it doesn't come back. That being said, you still won't see them coming...
• The story mode and arcade endings make it clear that the Mortal Kombat tournament is a practically useless means of protection as realms are constantly invaded left and right by any warlord worth their salt and Raiden even invades and conquers Outworld in certain endings. Kotal Kahn's ending has him beseech the Elder Gods for help leading to them re-establishing the tournament, with Outworld as the underdogs, but if the past is any indication, Kotal is more or less wasting his time.
• One of Leatherface's Brutalities has him kill the victim mid-impalement on his chainsaw with a hammer to the head. The disturbing part is how he leaves the body on the running chainsaw, causing it to violently jerk in the background.
  • Leatherface's "Tenderizer" Brutality is also in the running for the most disturbing Brutality in the game, not because the Brutality is over the top violent, but the visceral sound design and comparatively muted violence of the Brutality give it a disturbing sense of reality that isn't found in most other Brutalities. An undead ninja blowing a hole through your chest with a fireball is impossible, but a serial killer beating you to death with a hammer as you struggle to stay alive is far closer to reality than is comfortable, even if it is still unlikely.
• Except for Scorpion, all of the revenants are this. They all possess a gray-scaled Undeathly Pallor tone of their original colors with orange-colored Glowing Eyes of Doom, fire-colored Volcanic Veins, and hellish vocal chords. Every single one of them loyally serves Quan Chi and Shinnok as they were brainwashed to the point of extreme hatred despite retaining their original memories, combined with Darker and Edgier Evil Costume Switches that befit their status as Shinnok's evil minions. Being that they were Raiden's allies in the last game, Quan Chi turned them the Netherrealm's Elite Mooks and Praetorian Guard, placing them on a much higher rank than a run-of-the-mill demon. During the 25-year story gap, the corruption even tainted the revenants' minds, as some of them think Evil Feels Good in the name of the Netherrealm.
  • The eviler costumes that Liu Kang and Kitana adopt as the Netherrealm's new rulers shows how far they've voluntarily chosen to fall. That they willingly chose evil really gives the potential threat the revenants may pose if they start conquering other realms, particularly Earthrealm, in Shinnok's name.
    • Though as shown in Kung Jin and Kung Lao's arcade endings, there is a possibility that the revenants could manage to overcome the brainwashing and do a Heel–Face Turn, but with Quan Chi beheaded and Shinnok reduced to a mere living head by a corrupted Raiden at the end of story mode means that the remaining revenants are stuck in Hell forever, and if they decide to redeem themselves, it's going to be a long process. And some of Kung Lao's interactions with Jax during the story mode and his arcade ending also imply that he secretly hates being a revenant.
  • Jax, Scorpion and Sub-Zero's interactions with others confirm that they express deep remorse serving Quan Chi after being revived by Raiden. The three still suffer from ongoing depression as a result of the extreme brainwashing, with Jax and Hanzo attempting suicide several times while Sub-Zero received recurring nightmares of what he did as a revenant. Kung Lao and Jin's endings show that even Lao has deep regrets for what he did as a revenant.
  • If the player picks any of the revenant skins, some of their intros imply that they've chosen to be minions of Quan Chi once again or that the necromancer wants to turn the other kombatant into one of his new brainwashed Mooks.
• While the horror villains are naturally pretty creepy on their own, Jason notably stands out (Especially when you consider the campy nature of his home franchise). He makes zero vocal noises through all the bloodletting and suffering he gives or receives, which gives him a rather eerie quality not found in any of the other characters.
• Not surprisingly, the Alien and Predator are quite intimidating due to them being the only characters who kill their opponents regardless of player input. One way or another, the enemy isn't leaving the arena alive with these aliens in the ring:
  • The Predator messily rips out the opponent's spine before giving off a fearsome roar and making a trophy of their skull.
  • The Alien drags the opponent to its lair where they live out the rest of their mercifully short life as a host for a chestburster.