What Could Have Been / Mortal Kombat

Early concept art of Shang Tsung, (then named Shang Lao) boasting a far different design that is more akin to a Chinese/Taoist emperor.

Games

• Mortal Kombat (1992):
  • As John Tobias revealed on his Twitter account, the game was almost called Dragon Attack before Mortal Kombat was approved by the legal team.
  • Originally, Scorpion being a Palette Swap of Sub-Zero was meant to be an in-universe Take That!; Scorpion donned a yellow version of Sub-Zero's uniform to mess with him. Said plot element seems to have been retconned, though.
  • Sub-Zero's original name was going to be "Tundra." This is Development Gagged in Mortal Kombat 9 where prior to inheriting the moniker "Sub-Zero", the younger of the two cryomancer brothers went by the codename "Tundra".
  • Originally, a character named Kurtis Stryker was supposed to appear in the game. This character was replaced by Sonya. The character that was supposed to be Stryker would appear in Mortal Kombat II as Jax. A different character under the Kurtis Stryker name would appear in Mortal Kombat 3.
  • Liu Kang was originally going to be called Minamoto Yo Shin Soo. He was a Japanese mythological character, but John Tobias stated that they could not deal with the name. The fact that it's a misspelling ("Yoshitsune" - and also not Chinese) also likely helped prompt the change.
  • There's an unused character design based on Cynthia Rothrock but that was never used, although Sonya's original design is said to owe a lot to Rothrock.
  • Rumor has it the game was originally intended to have Jean-Claude Van Damme in it, and he was to be the hero of the story. Midway was unable to secure his services, however, so the story was retooled to center around Liu Kang, and Van Damme's character was retooled into Johnny Cage.
  • Network play was in test before DSL and cable internet were in wide availability. The test games used T1 Lines.
  • Raiden was originally thought to fight using a staff, but it was difficult to fit the weapon into the game's mechanics. The staff does appear in Mortal Kombat 4, which has a system designed with weapons in mind, but he doesn't actually fight with it until Deadly Alliance.
  • Shang Tsung was originally supposed to be named Shang Lao, and sported robes that made him look more like a Chinese/Taoist emperor/sorcerer and more like Lo Pan's actual body rather than as a decrepit man; this included a hat and staff.
  • Player-input Fatalities were initially not part of the game design; the only Fatality originally planned would've gone to Shang Tsung, who would behead your character with a sword upon losing; traces of this still remain as there's unused sprites◊ of Shang Tsung's cut Fatality still in the game! The development team eventually came around to giving every character their own finisher and it became the game's key selling point.
  • An official port of the game to the NES was planned alongside the other ports, but they had to scrap it as Acclaim's NES programming resources were being used on Alien 3.
  • A character named Kitsune was originally planned, who was the daughter of Shang Tsung that would betray her father. They decided to cut her but she was later retooled into Kitana.
• Mortal Kombat II:
  • Jax's original name was going to be Kurtis Stryker.
  • There were plans to have a character with hooked swords. Due to hardware limitations, he was modified to become Baraka. The design was modified again for MK3, which gave us Kabal.
    • Speaking of Baraka, his blades were intended to permanently stick out, but the developers thought this gives him an unfair advantage.
  • Kintaro was originally planned to be both an anthropomorphic tiger and a playable character. Due to budget constraints, the developers made him a clone of Goro with tiger stripes instead.
  • Noob Saibot may have been another female ninja at one point, as there's a Dummied Out sprite in the game with black clothing that is associated with his move commands.
  • Some removed sprites in the games files suggest that Sub-Zero was going to have an airborne ice attack.
  • There's a rough sketch◊ of Shang's supposed "true form", which is that of a demon. It was drawn by MK co-creator John Tobias, but this form has never actually appeared in canon.
  • Originally, the natives of Outworld was to be Baraka's race, and thus, Shao Kahn was to resemble him.

Films

• Mortal Kombat: The Movie:
  • Cameron Diaz was originally cast as Sonya. She broke her wrist while training and was replaced by Bridgette Wilson. Christina Applegate, Dina Meyer and Sharon Stone were also considered.
  • Michael Jai White was slated to play the role of Jax. Ultimately, he left in order to do Tyson. He would eventually end up portraying Jax in Mortal Kombat: Rebirth and Mortal Kombat: Legacy.
  • The filmmakers wanted Jean-Claude Van Damme to play Johnny Cage, but he turned down it down to do Street Fighter. Tom Cruise, Gary Daniels and Johnny Depp were also considered.
  • Brandon Lee was briefly considered for Johnny Cage, but was never officially offered the role and died before filming started.
  • Jason Scott Lee, Ernie Reyes Jr. and Russell Wong were considered for Liu Kang before Robin Shou got the role.
  • Sean Connery was offered the role of Raiden, but he turned it down, as he wasn't interested in doing a physical role. He told the producers that he'd rather golf. Danny Glover was also considered.
  • Steven Spielberg was supposed to make a cameo appearance in the movie. However, due to scheduling conflicts, he backed out. The director in Johnny's first scene bears a pretty good resemblance to Spielberg, making it pretty obvious where the cameo was supposed to take place.
  • A fight scene involving Sonya and Jade was cut from the script during production. It made the cut for the novelization, however.
  • Sonya was originally supposed to spare Kano in defiance of Shang Tsung. It was decided that this wasn't a satifying outcome.
  • Scorpion's death would also be different from the final form: instead of exploding after the shield toss, he falls off a platform and onto a spike, referencing the Pit stage fatality from MK. Ultimately, that death was repurposed to be used for Shang Tsung's.
  • Robin Shou said that in the original script he "was supposed to fall in love with Talisa Soto [Kitana]. I was looking forward to it, but they thought we have so much action, we don't want to add romance to it. They cut it out."
  • Scripted but not filmed was a scene where Shang Tsung allowed the "Kombatants" a night to bury Art Lean and mourn his loss. They buried him the Garden of Statues, underneath the statue of Kung Lao; this is the only place where Kung Lao appears in any of the movies.
  • The movie was originally going to end right after Raiden congratulates Liu Kang for defeating Shang Tsung and tells everybody they did great. Then the final scene where Shao Khan appears and threatens them was shot and added.
  • Reptile's fight with Liu Kang was a late addition to the movie to keep up the action pacing before reaching the climax. This partially explains how random his presence and transformation from a statue was.
  • The stunt ninjas were planned to be Tarkatan warriors like Baraka. This idea was canceled and they became ninja warriors.
• Mortal Kombat: Annihilation:
  • Just like in the first movie, Michael Jai White was slated to portray Jax. Ultimately, he turned down the role, this time to do Spawn. He finally portrayed Jax in Mortal Kombat: Rebirth and Mortal Kombat: Legacy.
  • In an early script for the movie, Smoke was supposed to aid Mileena in the attempt to assassinate Sonya.
  • Stryker and Kabal's brief mention was supposed to lead into a subplot where they were captured together with Kitana and they would have joined the fight in the climax. They were cut out presumably because the movie was cluttered as it was.
  • The shooting script had a fight between Sheeva and the mortal Raiden. This fight was used in the novelization, however.
  • There was supposed to be a Sequel Hook with Quan Chi making an appearance.
• Mortal Kombat (2021): According to writer Greg Russo, he tried really hard to find a way to work the famous "Toasty!" line into the film, but couldn't find a way to make it fit in naturally.