Characters / Mortal Kombat – Kronika

Mortal Kombat Main Character Index
Main series: MK1 | MK2 | MK3 | MK4 | Deadly Alliance | Deception | Armageddon | MK vs. DC Universe | MK9 | MKX | MK11
Spinoffs: Mythologies: Sub-Zero | Special Forces
Non-video game: The Movie | Conquest | Defenders of the Realm | 2021 Movie
Individual Characters: Scorpion | Sub-Zero I/Noob Saibot | Johnny Cage | Liu Kang | Raiden | Shang Tsung | Sub-Zero II | Kitana | Mileena | Shao Kahn | Shinnok and Quan Chi | Kronika

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Spoilers for 9 and X will be unmarked

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Kronika

”The arc of the universe bends to my will.”

Voiced by: Jennifer Hale (English), Breck Gambill (Face Model), Irina Indigo (Latin American Spanish)

A mysterious goddess who oversees the flow of time, and the first female boss in the series. She greatly disapproves of Raiden's attempt to prevent Armageddon, but it is not until Shinnok's defeat that she is finally spurred into action. Believing that the balance of the universe has been disrupted and shifted too far in favor of the forces of light, Kronika has decided to take matters into her own hands by restarting the timeline anew and placing it back on its "rightful" course.

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A-G

• Abusive Parents: Kronika combines the worst attributes of emotional manipulation (Cetrion) and neglect (Shinnok).
• Achilles' Heel: Kronika is surprisingly vulnerable to being zoned due to the quirks of her moveset. For one, she can't crouch, so characters who can spam projectiles repeatedly can cheese her to death this way even on Very Hard. For two, she has no combo breaks, so the most she can do when pushed into a corner is to hold block until you inevitably break it, rinse and repeat. For three, her recovery frames are long enough to make her vulnerable to stun-locking. All of this combined made Kronika out to be possibly the easiest series boss to date, despite being its Big Bad.
• The Ageless: She is immune to the ravages of time, but can be killed through violent means unlike her son, Shinnok.
• All According to Plan: Her armies are turn against her, her forces are bested, her enemies find her keep, yet she continues to claim that this is all part of her plan. It's only when Liu Kang and Raiden fuse, she starts to panic.
• Alpha Bitch: She outranks The Protector Gods, The Elder Gods, and even the One Being. Yet she's far more crueler than them all.
• And Then What?: During Aftermath. Kronika gives the Armor Piercing Quesion to aftermath-placed Raiden and Fujin: "Even if you defeat me, what then?" Kronika asks them even more questions, knowing that Shang Tsung will betray them and place the realms in a much worse fate. Raiden is unaware of the future events since he has not lived those events yet, while Fujin has already seen those events, but was too gullible for Shang Tsung's true intentions.
• The Announcer: Shares round announcement duties with Shao Kahn this time around, her voice occasionally replacing the latter's. She can be selected permanently if you link your console account to the Mortal Kombat mobile game, which unlocks her in the announcer options on the console side.
• Antagonist Abilities: Her command over time itself renders mortals completely helpless to her power whenever she appears. The only reasons why Kronika hasn't instantly killed her enemies when she could is because A) she considers them to be mere pests unworthy of her attention and B) most of her enemies are past versions of current allies, and killing the former would erase the latter.
• Anti-Villain: Subverted. While her goal of Balance Between Good and Evil isn't inherently evil, Kronika's idea of balance is about having her two children Cetrion and Shinnok pitting the realms against one another endlessly. Furthermore, she has already wiped out countless timelines trying to put her plan into motion.
• Balance Between Good and Evil: Her goal is this literally. In her mind, a balanced universe means that both her children exist and endlessly fight each other. Deconstructed by Raiden, who points out that good and evil being equally powerful is literally the worst possible thing. In Geras's MK11 arcade ending, he realizes her quest to create the perfect timeline drove her to insanity.
• Bald of Evil: Not a single strand of hair on her head, and not a single trace of good in her soul.
• Been There, Shaped History: Even back in the original timeline, she was controlling everything, and everything was going according to her whim, including Armageddon, until Raiden sent his message to the past.
• Benevolent Boss: Subverted. There is a definitive contrast between her more affable and reasonable behavior to her underlings and the more obvious cruelty of past villains like Shao Kahn. Despite not killing her minions when they fail, she is just as uncaring towards her own like the others, seeing them as nothing but pawns in her scheme to build her New Era.
• Big Bad:
  • Of MK11. The first female main antagonist of the franchise, Kronika decides to join the fray due to Raiden's repeated attempts to tamper with the timeline.
  • On a bigger note, she is the true villain of the entire franchise, as she was behind the events of the original and rebooted timelines.
• Big Bad Ensemble: She forms this with Shang Tsung in the Aftermath DLC storyline.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Of the Aftermath DLC story. Despite her best efforts, she is outplayed and ultimately defeated by Shang Tsung.
• Blatant Lies: She promises absolute power and dominion over realms to almost all her followers and has no real intentions to uphold it even if it were possible. A few catch on to this during their arcade endings.
• Bloodier and Gorier: Her own death at the end of Arcade Mode, compared to previous games since MK9. She gets kicked into her own hourglass, shattering it. It eventually breaks and cuts off three of her limbs, as she desperately tries to get the crown. One of the shards slices her head off vertically, and Kronika is finally sucked into the hourglass, restoring it back to normal.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: Zigzagged and apparently justified. Once Raiden and the other heroes figure out that her machinations were pitting him against Liu Kang throughout countless timelines, she appears before them and admits that the reason is to keep them from combining her power against her. According to her, the reason she's telling them this is because it's not the first time they've made this discovery, and still ended up failing to stop her to the point where she stopped keeping count of how many times this has happened. In the case of the current timeline, she kidnaps Liu Kang to have his revenant steal his soul, so that Raiden would have to face her without him. The only reason this backfires is that Raiden finally figures out a way around their current situation.
• Boring, but Practical: In the Bad Ending of the story mode, she kills Fire God Liu Kang simply by drawing a blade from her arm and beheading him, which is quite simplistic considering her vast displays of power through the game and her own Fatality.
• Bright Is Not Good: Her aesthetic is sleek metallic white with gold and silver accents everywhere, in contrast to previous antagonists, but her intentions are no less omnicidal. Many of Kronika's allies even receive equipment upgrades with this trademark design as a symbol of their allegiance to the Titaness of Time.
• Brought Down to Normal: In Kano's Mortal Kombat 11 arcade ending, Kronika willingly relinquished her power over time to him in exchange for her life.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: She's the first primary female antagonist in the series - and unlike Shinnok and Shao Kahn, who are both warlords, Kronika just wants to course-correct the timeline, which she considers as the right thing to do. This becomes a subversion as it's revealed that she's every bit as ruthless and uncaring as the other two, if not more so.
• Control Freak: There's not a single character on her side that she doesn't treat like an underling to be ordered or a pawn to be duped. And that "balance" she pays so much lip service to isn't about stability or peace or any higher purpose; it's just her own preference for arbitrary symmetry.
• Confusion Fu: Part of the challenge she poses as a boss is that some of her attacks have extremely similar, if not outright identical, startup animations. For example, whenever she summons a large blue orb, it may either split into 4 projectiles in a downward spread, or it may fire an unblockable laser that sweeps across the floor and freezes you if you get hit.
• Cool Crown: Later in the story mode, she is shown to have a magical crown which is a powerful artifact on its own, used to gather souls at Shang Tsung's island to further her schemes. It seems also able to strengthen in kombat whoever wears it.
• Crown of Power: Kronika makes use of a crown that has been placed inside the Well of Souls used by the sorceror Shang Tsung so that the crown will amplify her power. Through her abilities and influence, she specifically arranged for the Well of Souls to exist for this purpose. During their playable chapter, Jax and Jacqui Briggs try to confiscate the crown before Kronika can get it, and one of them will even use it against Kronika's daughter, Cetrion. They gain enough power from the crown to defeat even the Elder Goddess until Cetrion forces them to surrender it by threatening the life of their loved one.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: She's the only Mortal Kombat Final Boss who doesn't explode (Shinnok in Mortal Kombat 4 and the Deadly Alliance being exceptions) in Tower Mode. Rather, she gets cut to shreds by the hourglass shards, before one slices her head in half before it repairs itself while dragging her mutilated corpse into it. She got off easier in story mode where Liu Kang turns her into organic glass and destroying her body. It's actually just as bad for her in Aftermath which ends with her soul being stolen by Shang Tsung.
• Cutting Off the Branches: And she's the one holding the shears. The original timeline through Armageddon, the timeline in MK9, and every single Arcade ladder ending for every character in the entire series is revealed to have been alternate timelines that she allowed to exist in an effort to create a perfect, balanced history, and when none of them measured up she simply erased them and started again. This game is simply the first time we've actually seen her doing the pruning.
• Dark Action Girl: One who is notable for being the first female main antagonist in the franchise.
• Determinator: Kronika displays the more negative side of the trope. She spent countless aeons trying to build her perfect timeline without ever giving up, but it has taken more than a toll on her sanity, as implied by Geras' Tower ending. Even when her plans get derailed, she is quick to fight with everything to win.
• Defiant to the End: In "Aftermath", after Shang Tsung beats her and leaves her feebly crawling on the ground, he offers her the chance to serve him. She refuses, claiming she's a Titan and likely finding the idea of working under a mortal laughable even in her battered state. Shang absorbs her soul as a result and her body turns to dust.
• Destroy the Villain's Weapon: In her arcade boss, after the Player destroys the Hourglass, the shards of glass hurl towards Kronika. Mutilating, and killing her.
• Devour the Dragon: Before facing off with Liu Kang (in the main story)/Shang Tsung (in Aftermath), Kronika commands Cetrion to sacrifice herself so that Kronika can absorb her Elder God soul for a boost. Cetrion reluctantly consents.
• Didn't See That Coming:
  • When she senses the merger of Raiden and Liu Kang, resulting in the birth of Fire God Liu Kang, Kronika is forced to admit that Raiden surprised her for the first time ever in all the timelines she's known him and to acknowledge that her defeat has become a distinct possibility.
    Kronika: Out of desperation comes invention. I had not thought it possible for Raiden to surprise me. Our success is no longer certain. We must make haste.
  • She certainly did not foresee Shang Tsung, Nightwolf and Fujin escaping the Void at all in Aftermath, which allows her cotton on to the fact that things will go Off the Rails.
• Disc-One Final Boss: While she is the Main Antagonist for Mortal Kombat 11's main story, in the DLC story Aftermath, she is quickly replaced with Shao & Sindel, and then killed by Shang Tsung.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: In many ways, Kronika acts like a video game player obsessed with getting the best scores or results for her game. Her habit of rewinding or stopping time is akin to a player reverting to the latest saved game, restarting a game or cheating when things don't go exactly the way they want. An obsessed gamer is also obsessed with finding the so-called "perfect" game while being unconcerned with everything else, much like how Kronika sees everyone else in the story as little more than disposable playthings. Kronika is basically a cosmic example of an unhealthy obsession with a game.
• Early-Bird Cameo: She appears to Jade in her Mortal Kombat 9 ending (albeit with a different appearance) and is implied to be the one giving Kitana a vision in Mortal Kombat X. She now makes her debut in 11. One of the giant busts in the Jinsei Chamber in X also resembles her.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Just to prove that nobody likes the entitled, arrogant Frost, not even Kronika thinks highly of her, if the latter's non-canon ending is anything to go by. Even if Kronika herself has arrogance as a Fatal Flaw.
  • She makes it a point to note just how treacherous Shang Tsung really is when she sees him rapidly backstab so many of his allies, culminating in the deaths of Shao Kahn and Sindel.
    Kronika: You have no one left to betray.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: She was smugly confident that she had played out every scenario with Raiden that she had nothing to lose by telling him that she intentionally pitted him against Liu Kang to ensure their combined might can never be brought to bear against her in every timeline she's destroyed. It backfires on her when Raiden states she unintentionally offered him a third option by fusing with Liu Kang, resulting in the birth of Fire God Liu Kang.
• Evil Counterpart: She is one to Raiden throughout the Story Mode when it comes to gathering followers. Kronika favors lying and manipulating and sees her allies as nothing but pawns and minions whereas Raiden treats his followers with respect and sees them as worthy friends and warriors. She is also the Big Bad to Raiden's Big Good status.
• Evil Genius: She spends most of 11's main story scheming and observing. Using her underlings to hold the heroes back long enough for her Hourglass to gain enough energy to rewind time.
• Fatal Flaw: Her weakness is pride, as she only truly cares for her selfish idea of cosmic balance and considered the lives of everyone else, including her own children, who happened to be Elder Gods, to be beneath her concern. She was so utterly confident that she had played out every scenario with Raiden that she had nothing to lose by telling him that she intentionally pitted him against Liu Kang to ensure their combined might can never be brought to bear against her. It should have been no surprise that he would pine for an effective third option that she fed him on a silver platter, as when she senses the merger of Raiden and Liu Kang, resulting in the birth of Fire God Liu Kang, she is forced to admit that Raiden surprised her for the first time ever in all the time she's known him and to acknowledge that her defeat has become a distinct possibility.
• Fate Worse than Death: Spawn's ladder ending is one of the two endings where she isn't killed (the first being the bad ending) though she probably wishes she was. For her crimes against the Realms and the Kombatants, Spawn throws her into Hell to suffer alongside Malebolgia for all eternity. Couldn't have happened to a nicer lady.
  • Her fatality has her killing, then reviving, then killing, reviving, killing... and so on...her opponent, painfully rearranging their body each time. Given that she's a Time God, she could literally do this nonstop for all eternity. Or stop to do something else more important and pick up right back where she left off once that's been taken care of.
• Flunky Boss: At 66% and 33% health, respectively, Kronika will retreat away from the stage and summon a random kombatant to fight the player in her stead. These summoned minions have reduced HP compared to their usual selves, and cannot use Fatal Blows. Defeating them will bring Kronika back into the fight.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Kano's Tower ending creates one for her, since she dies with the shards of her Hourglass but appears alive later to relinquish her artifact's powers to him.
• Gold and White Are Divine: Has this motif going on in both her outfit and on parts of outfits of Kombatants under her protection. This gets lampshaded by Jacqui when they first lay eyes on Jax's Evil Costume Switch. It's also worth noting that in Ladder Mode endings most Kombatants have their clothes altered to carry the motif after defeating her.
  Jacqui: Those look like Kronika's design...!
• Greater-Scope Villain:
  • Of the entire franchise, as she serves this role in both the original and rebooted timelines.
  • In Scorpion, Shang Tsung and Sonya's arcade endings, they discover that Kronika was only the tip of the iceberg, as there are other Titans, some of which may be more powerful and worse than her. It's hinted that they are behind the various bad things that happened throughout the timelines. Sonya even forms her own god-squad to actively hunt down these Eldritch Abominations.

H-O

• Hated by All: Downplayed but still applicable. While she curries favor with a lot of allies, none of them actually trust Kronika to keep her promises to them of giving them exactly what they want in her "New Era". In their Arcade endings, they all turn on her, either make her use the hourglass to create the timeline they want or do so themselves, and most of them kill her after that. Again in their Arcade endings, even Cetrion and Geras eventually realize her plans are insane and she must die for the safety of the realms.
• Hoist by Her Own Petard: In the Klassic Tower mode, she is killed by her own hourglass, which explodes into glass shards that slice her into pieces.
• Humanoid Abomination: She doesn't look that much different from Geras at first, but she's ancient and strong enough for her daughter to be an Elder God. Notably, she's the most human looking Titan out of all them thus far shown, implying she may be far more alien than she already seems.
• Hypocrite: Her claim that Raiden's actions post-MKX have wrecked her precious balance between good and evil and forced her hand rings hollow when it turns out that she has already erased the timeline countless times and in every single one of them, she has manipulated events to pit Raiden and Liu Kang against one another, resulting in both their Face Heel Turns; meaning that she is responsible for the very things she blames Raiden for.
• I Die Free: Someone who stood as a Titan will never live as a slave, especially to one of her old slaves; Shang Tsung.
• Immune to Flinching: Kronika doesn't react to hits like the other kombatants, meaning attacks that force an opponent into a secondary hit state (such as being tackled) won't work on her and will whiff. This also means you can't use a Fatal Blow against her.
• It's All About Me: Despite her claims, her goals are ultimately pretty selfish since it's not so much about balance as having things play out as she sees fit and getting antsy whenever things don't go as planned. The fact that she ends up having the Elder Gods killed more or less proves this point. Keep in mind that she was mostly the guiding hand behind both the original timeline and the start of the new one. And both times were meant to keep Liu Kang and Raiden from stopping her.
• It Runs in the Family: She's the mother of Shinnok. Let that sink in for a moment. This may have been invoked by Kronika, who shaped her son into being evil in order to fulfill her goal of a balance between light and darkness.
• Jerkass God: All she cares about is her goal of a "balanced" universe (read: one where the realms are locked in a Forever War). She is willing to kill, lie, and manipulate anyone (including her own children, Shinnok and Cetrion) to reach that goal, which benefits no-one but herself.
• Just Between You and Me: In Chapter 11, she has Raiden's warriors frozen in time so she can gloat to him alone about how Raiden and Liu Kang's combined strength is the key to defeat her. Between her chuckles and confidence of victory, she unwittingly gave the Thunder God an idea of how to thwart her.
• Karmic Death: She engineered and manipulated Shang Tsung's entire destiny as a soul-stealing sorcerer for her own personal use. Unfortunately, much like Liu Kang, she completely underestimated Shang Tsung's capabilities, and is thus taken aback even further than in the main story when he, of all people, kills her and steals her soul after he becomes the new Keeper of Time.
• Lack of Empathy: Kronika only truly cares for her selfish idea of cosmic balance and considered the lives of everyone else, including gods, to be beneath her concern. Throughout Mortal Kombat 11's story mode, she treated everyone else around her as either useful but expendable pawns (her allies) or laughably ineffective pests (her enemies). Kronika even seemed to treat her son Shinnok (representing death, darkness and vice) and her daughter Cetrion (representing life, light and virtue) as little more than tools to perpetuate the violent eternal struggle for Balance Between Good and Evil she deemed necessary to maintain her precious balance.
• Legion of Doom: Forms one out of existing villains and groups across time, which includes Shao Kahn's Outworld empire, the Cyber Lin-Kuei, the Black Dragon, the Netherrealm revenants, D'Vorah, Frost, Noob Saibot, Scorpion's past self, and the elder Jackson Briggs.
• Let's You and Him Fight:
  • This is almost her entire MO across a universal scale: Her idea of balance is constant conflict between the realms, forcing them into an eternal give-and-take where no side truly turns the tide and defeats the other, and when peace seems too close, she instigates conflict anew.
  • Exploited liberally by forcing Liu Kang and Raiden into conflict in every timeline, to avoid their combined might disrupting her vision. She even keeps Revenant Liu Kang in reserve to fight Raiden as a safety precaution.
  • This is also her objective throughout Story Mode; when Revenant Liu Kang grows impatient at her inaction, she assures him that the heroes going through her pawns has left her to work on her hourglass unimpeded; better for them to fight Shao Kahn or Frost than her.
  • Also does this in Aftermath. With the forces of Earthrealm flanked between the newly arrived forces of Outworld serving under Shao Kahn, Sindel and Shang Tsung as well as her own, she hopes to weaken everyone so that she can make her bid on getting her Crown back.
• Light Is Not Good: Despite the golds and whites on her outfit and status as a Time God, she is actually a deranged, Mad God. If anything, she is an outright Omnicidal Maniac.
• Literally Shattered Lives: Liu Kang as a Thunder and Fire God turns her into organic glass before breaking her arms, head, and body into pieces. The frozen look of disbelief on Kronika's face makes this even more satisfying.
• Loose Lips: She was so utterly confident that she had played out every scenario with Raiden that she had nothing to lose by telling him that she intentionally pitted him against Liu Kang to ensure their combined might can never be brought to bear against her. It should have been no surprise that he would pine for an effective third option that she fed him on a silver platter.
• Mad God: She hides it better than most, but Kronika is certainly not of sound mind. As her own servant Geras surmises in his non-canon Arcade ending, it's likely because of all her failed attempts at creating her own perfect timeline. Considering that she's erased countless timelines already and had to have been at it since the very beginning of time itself (to where she states that she lost count of how many times she had the conversation with Raiden)…
• Manipulative Bitch: She deliberately chose potential allies who were fed up with their lot in life (or death) in the current timeline, making them all desperate to make things better by any means necessary. By offering these people a chance to do just that, Kronika is able to gather a vast, loyal army in a frighteningly short amount of time. Unfortunately for them, they don't realize that Kronika is under no obligation to fulfill their wishes once the so-called New Era begins.
  • For the revenants of the Netherrealm, she offered a timeline with Raiden erased from existence.
  • For Shao Kahn and his followers, she offered a timeline in which they lead a multiverse-spanning empire, free from the watchful eyes of the Elder Gods.
  • For Kano, his younger self and the Black Dragon clan, she offered the chance to transform Earth into a Villain World where they can run rampant, unhindered by the law.
  • For Sektor, Noob Saibot and Frost, she offered each of them leadership of their own versions of the Lin Kuei, shaped to their personal ideals.
  • For the revenant Scorpion from the past, she promised to restore his family and the old Shirai Ryu clan to life.
  • For the present Jackson Briggs, who had recently lost his wife, she promised a timeline in which he remains a proud soldier while his beloved daughter never enlisted in the army.
• Make Way for the New Villains: Although she doesn't do the deed herself, she shows up after Raiden has incapacitated Shinnok's head to address the fallen Elder God. She is the first antagonist of the new timeline who is a completely new character and not an existing antagonist from the original course of events.
• Meaningful Name: The name Kronika is a feminization of Kronos, which means time.
• Moral Sociopathy: She truly believes she is doing the right thing. However, the way she does everything is so sociopathic that it ends up making her look even worse. She says that it is important to maintain the Balance Between Good and Evil, but what she wants is Forever War which will result in so much suffering for many people. She attempts to remove free will from the people of the timeline so she can have what she believes is the perfect timeline for everyone involved. Her arrogance prevents her from allowing any result that doesn't have her desired outcome.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Trying to pit Raiden and Liu Kang against each other for the umpteenth time backfired on her spectacularly.
• No Body Left Behind: When Shang Tsung drains her soul in Aftermath, her body dissolves into sand and vanishes, as opposed to everyone else, who leave corpses behind.
• No-Nonsense Nemesis: If nothing else, she's efficient; she is actively working on her scheme to reset existence, even conjuring sand duplicates of other characters to buy her more time, in the final boss battle. In story mode, losing a round to her gives her enough time to succeed, resetting enough of the world to erase everything and everyone Liu Kang knows; beating her at that point just gives him an opportunity to ensure the next world is a free and happy one.
  • Her reasoning for putting Shang Tsung into the void outside of time is entirely out of the justified belief that he'd manipulate events to come out on top one way or another. As seen in Aftermath, a free Shang Tsung, especially one who is fully aware of Kronika's worries of him, manages to come out on top of literally everyone imaginable through pure guile and manipulation, ultimately resulting in her soul being stolen before she even had a chance to turn back time. Even if he was stopped by Fire God Liu Kang, she still effectively lost even worse than in the base game, where she at least managed to go the beginning of time canonically.
• No-Sell: Kronika is immune to many aspects of the player's repertoire.
  • She is completely immune to juggles, whether by way of abilities or combos. While she can still be knocked down by hitting her enough, none of the juggles will do anything beyond their damage values.
  • She's also immune to Fatal Blows, only taking damage from the initial hit, while the rest of the combo will not commence. Krushing Blow combos, on the other hand, can still be performed, but Kronika will not take the increased damage and the cinematics will not play.
  • Much like Shao Khan in MK 9, throw attacks are unusable on her and attempts to do so will leave you vulnerable to a good ass-kicking, possibly a fatal one in certain conditions.
• Non Standard Game Over: Entirely unique to herself, if you lose the final fight against her in story mode, she forms a blade to cut off Fire God Liu Kang's head, then announce that the New Era will begin.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: She wants to rewind time back to the beginning and restart it so she can restore what she sees as balance to the universe. Although her idea of a Balance Between Good and Evil entails her two children being locked in an eternal conflict that would result in pointlessly fighting just so that she can dictate how everyone's destiny unfolds.
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: Issues one to Shao Kahn by offering him a new empire to rule.
  Kronika: My Hourglass requires protection while I work. Will your Outworld armies defend it?
  Shao Kahn: [nodding] They shall.
• Offscreen Inertia: Similar to Quan Chi's leg beating fatality, Kronika never stops tearing and reattaching her victim apart onscreen.
• Oh, Crap!: In the final chapter, she reacts with relative panic when the Liu Kang she has imprisoned disappears, having merged with Raiden and his revenant self. She even admits that she’s been caught off guard, and hurries to finish her plan before anything else can go wrong.
  Kronika: Our success is no longer certain. We must make haste.
• The Old Gods: She is the first known Titan of the Mortal Kombat universe, making her ancient and powerful by even the Elder Gods' reckoning. In Scorpion's and Sonya's Mortal Kombat 11 arcade endings, Kronika was just the tip of the iceberg, with entire pantheons of hostile, ancient deities inhabiting the multiverse, some of whom may be worse than her.
• Orcus on His Throne: With a few exceptions, she spends most of the game in her Keep. While this is justified as her preparing her Hourglass to reset time, whenever she decides to get involved directly, she can stop time and everyone but gods are frozen. It's only due to Pride and Bond Villain Stupidity that she allows the heroes to take out her allies one by one, when if she cared to take a more personal role in her own plan, she could have probably pulled it off on her own.
• Order Is Not Good: Considering her obsession with balance, she ironically comes hard on the end of Order, with the caveat of being her specific, selfish vision of an orderly universe.
• Our Titans Are Different: Explicitly calls herself a Titan in one of the variant scenes in her Story Mode, and she fits as a creature older than even the Elder Gods. Scorpion, Sonya and Shang Tsung discover in their endings that she's hardly the Last of Her Kind.

P-Y

• Peggy Sue: A negative version who uses her time manipulation abilities to constantly reset the timeline when her efforts to balance things don't play out as she wants. Then she tries again with new knowledge of what went wrong last go around. The events of 11 happen when she is about to figure things out for good and eliminate any variables that might disrupt her plan. Then Raiden gives Liu Kang an 11th-Hour Superpower and things go completely off the rails for her, although she still technically succeeds in her goal of at least resetting things.
• Pet the Dog: Slightly. In Aftermath when Cetrion blames herself for allowing Shang Tsung to obtain the Crown, Kronika claims it was her own fault for underestimating Shang Tsung's cunning.
  • In Kabal's ending, she does apparently keep her word in giving what he wants in exchange for control of the Hour-Glass, probably because she now knows he can beat her, but still.
• Power Floats: Appears in some cutscenes floating, with her legs vanishing.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Unlike Shao Kahn and Shinnok, she does not particularly enjoy the suffering of others and would not jeopardize her own plans for such. As a patient Manipulative Bastard, Kronika prefers a tactful approach. When working with allies, she discusses her plans with them and aids them however she could, such as providing aid and resources, usually through temporal manipulation. Despite this, Kronika had every intention of ending them all once they were no longer useful to her. In her own way, Kronika is even more ruthless and uncaring than either Shao Kahn or Shinnok.
• Pride: This is Kronika's most defining character flaw and it is understandable given that she is more powerful and far older than the Elder Gods themselves.
• Psychotic Smirk: Wears one in her Arcade Boss fights as she speaks to her opponent.
  Kronika: Come, it is time... to die.
• Resurrection/Death Loop: Her Fatality. She tears you apart telekinetically, and then rewinds time so she can do it again in a different way. She keeps doing this forever until you choose something from the Game Over menu.
• Satanic Archetype: And how! Kronika is very clearly the true devil figure in the franchise, even topping Shinnok in that regard. To elaborate, Kronika has a lot of incredibly Satanic elements surrounding her character, which include her being a God of Evil with a fetish-level obsession of supposedly keeping Balance Between Good and Evil, and yet her plan is to actually destroy the universe countless times to satisfy her ego and remake the universe in her own image, is an exceptional manipulator, she regularly tempts and corrupts different people into becoming her allies (all presented like a Deal with the Devil scenario) in order to further her deeds and kills them once their work is done, lies to her own allies and treats them horribly, enjoys the suffering of others and commits unspeakable atrocities for fun, and further enhancing her Satanic qualities are her personality embodying each of the Seven Deadly Sins and the brutal, enigmatic and unpredictable nature of her actions that evoke a Nothing Is Scarier feel to them. What ultimately seals the deal, though, is her appearance, with a color-scheme that evokes that of light and brightness typical associated with angels, something very commonly used to describe Satan taking the form of angel of light to disguise himself and trick humans, literally making her Lucifer.
• Shadow Archetype:
  • She represents what Raiden could become if he started micromanaging mortals instead of guiding and respecting their free will, corrupting his mind over time. Also, when it comes to gathering followers, Kronika favors lying and manipulation, and sees her allies as nothing but pawns, whereas Raiden treats his followers with respect, and sees them as worthy friends and warriors. She is also the Big Bad to Raiden's Big Good status. Geras's arcade ending even shows that her repeated attempts to create the ideal timeline have taken a toll on her sanity.
  • Kronika also becomes one to Fire God Liu Kang at the end of the story. Once Liu Kang gains access to the Hourglass, he chooses to let mortals control their destiny rather than controlling all aspects of their lives like Kronika did.
• Smug Super: Through most of her appearances in the story, she's brimming with utmost confidence, assured that this time there's no way her plan can fail even when the Earthrealm warriors start taking down her forces over the course of the story and get closer to stopping her. After all, she's a Goddess of time and can easily just freeze or rewind things if she feels she has to. Plus she's done this before in countless timelines. Even when Raiden does catch on to her, she erases that timeline entirely and starts anew. The difference this time is that she has stockpiled enough power to really control things to the point she can erase undesirables as she sees fit. However, once Raiden gives up his powers to Liu Kang and makes him a God who, you know, is also the Champion of Mortal Kombat, this begins to drop as it's one of the few moments she notes something hasn't gone according to her will and is in jeopardy of completely derailing her plans.
• Smug Snake: She gloats to Raiden about how his and Liu Kang's combined strength is the key to defeat her. Between her chuckles and confidence of victory, she unwittingly gave the Thunder God an idea of how to thwart her for good.
• SNK Boss: Her fights only last one round, but she throws everything, the kitchen sink and a few things that aren't even hers at the player. She is completely immune to grapples, fatal blows, and even certain specials, severely hampering the effectiveness of many characters. On top of that, she summons random fighters in her place (who have severely gimped health, but the damage they can inflict remains unchanged) at two thirds and one-third health, changes the stage once you kill them and gains a new ability with each shift. Her normal specials are actually even worse, such as summoning multiple homing projectiles, surrounding herself with a barrier of three sand balls, and her most annoying ability, an unblockable, extraordinarily fast laser that, should it connect, heavily damages your fighter, rewinds time for them (resulting in you being unable to attack), and leaves you frozen in the air for a few additional seconds just for good measure. And while you're being put through the wringer, Kronika can take all the time in the world to warp around, pulling off combos while you're completely helpless to do anything.
• The Sociopath: Despite her claims of doing what is right for everyone, Kronika carries many classic hallmarks of the trope. She has no empathy for those who are affected by her tampering beyond any superficial reasons that help further her plan, and she has wiped out countless timelines to get her desired outcome. Even within those timelines, she willingly destroys the bonds between allies to make them turn on each other whenever there is a threat to her plans. She manipulates people both by removing their free will in tampering with the timeline and in personal ways by (usually falsely) promising to give people what they want. She's incredibly prideful to the point that she won't allow any result that isn't her perfect Balance Between Good and Evil (read: her Forever War). Because of this, she has low tolerance for frustration whenever she doesn't have the upper hand in some way. And this pride removes any remorse she has for doing any of this, since she sees all of it as necessary to keep things in order (or, at least, her vision of what that order should be).
• Teleport Spam: One of many reasons why fighting Kronika can be insanely annoying on harder difficulties. Kronika will teleport around the stage when fighting the player, giving her both great zoning and getaway capabilities.
• Tempting Fate: As the forces arrayed against her approach her fortress, she tells her allies that their enemies will lose. Shortly afterwards, Fire God Liu Kang is born from an unexpected merger of Raiden and Liu Kang, the two heroes she kept at each others' throats over countless timelines.
• There Is No Kill like Overkill: In both giving and receiving varieties:
  • Lose to her in Arcade, and she grabs your character telekinetically to rip them apart. Then uses her Time Master ability to put them back together. Then rip them apart again. Then reconstruct. Then rip...
  • Because this is Mortal Kombat, Kronika gets as good as she gives. Defeating her in a traditional arcade ladder results in the most gruesome death of an arcade boss for the series. The Hourglass explodes and Kronika is quickly acquainted with a hail of broken glass, and every moment of it looks mighty unpleasant.
• Time Abyss: To the point that her son and daughter are Elder Gods. Considering that the Elder Gods themselves are timeless beings who observe the realms from the moment of their creation...
• Time Master: Kronika is a goddess who can control the flow of time itself. She can stop time, create a "Groundhog Day" Loop (subjecting the player to an endless loop of gruesome deaths in her Fatality), and pull people and objects from the past into the present. With the proper preparations, Kronika can use the Hourglass at her Keep to enhance her power to the point that she can literally rewind the timeline to beyond the dawn of time itself. Other gods such as Raiden and Fire God Liu Kang are immune to Kronika's control over time to a degree, since gods exist outside the normal laws of time.
• Vicious Cycle: Kronika can control circumstances so that certain disastrous events are repeated again and again across different timelines in some form. In fact, this is the reason why Liu Kang and Raiden eventually turn against each other in every timeline so far. All this was so that both of them would never join forces and become a true threat to Kronika's plans.
• Villainous Breakdown:
  • Slightly, as Fire God Liu Kang starts adjusting to his powers and beating down all her revenant guards one by one, she begins to realize that her earlier fears are beginning to come to light and for once, her voice actually has alarm to it, starting to show cracks of her celestial facade.
  • A more prominent one in Aftermath when Shang Tsung manages to work around her influence and invade her Keep while wearing her Crown, forcing her to fight him while at the same level of power as he is, if not weaker. In this case, she outright yells at her subordinates to kill the person who incensed her.
• Villainous Mother-Son Duo: Kronika is just as evil and scummy as her son Shinnok.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Justified in her case. In chapter 3, upon freezing Liu Kang and Kung Lao in time, Geras brings up the possibility of finishing them right there, though Kronika retorts that she needs them alive otherwise their Revenant counterparts would cease to exist as well.
• You Can't Thwart Stage One: At the end of the story mode, Kronika successfully restarts the Mortal Kombat timeline. The only consolation is that Liu Kang ends Kronika's life afterwards, ensuring that, for the first time, the timeline is truly free of her meddling, and beating her without losing a round means she hasn't gone so far back that he can't save Kitana or everyone else.
• You Kill It, You Bought It: Any character who defeats her in the arcade ladder will gain all her time powers for themselves. In the Story Mode, Liu Kang becomes the new master of time after slaying Kronika.