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Trivia / Mortal Kombat II

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  • Acting for Two:
    • Dan Pesina returns as both Johnny Cage and the male ninjas once again.
    • Richard Divizio plays Kano and Baraka (the former being a background cameo).
    • Katalin Zamiar plays the role of the female ninjas (all palette swaps).
  • The Cast Showoff: Like in the first game, Liu Kang's non-fatal Fatality was one of Ho-Sung Pak's trademark moves.
  • Defictionalization: Although not particularly popular, "Kitana"note  and "Mileena"note  have become real baby names for girls.
  • Development Gag:
    • In one of his Fatalities, Liu Kang turns into a dragon that resembles the logo of the series.
    • Johnny Cage has a "triple" decapitation Fatality that worked like the regular one, only instead of one head, Johnny knocks off three. This Fatality references a glitch in the original Mortal Kombat where Johnny could knock off multiple heads with his Fatality.
  • Dummied Out: The game has several unused sprites within its coding, mostly hinting at unused moves. Rule of thumb is that some of these ideas later got used in Mortal Kombat Trilogy:
    • Sub-Zero had sprites for an aerial version of his ice blast move as well as a colour-corrupted version of Reptile's invisibility animation.
    • Kintaro has an unused move where he grabs you and punches you away. This later got undummied for Trilogy. He also has an unused sprite set of him standing and watching a fight, probably in Kahn's Arena. An image of Kintaro can also be found in the data, similar to the Goro intro from the previous game. Said image was later cropped and used for Kintaro's character select image in Trilogy as well.
    • Shao Kahn has several unused assets such as an animation of him standing up off of his throne, an aura that would surround him in his laugh winpose, a clapping attack, a throw where he grabbed and punched you away, a double handed hammer punch, a possible unused fatality where he'd thrust his fist into a portal where it would emerge from above, gigantic, crushing his victim, and finally, an unused hammer attack one whole game early. The grab-punch throw and hammer punch later got used in Trilogy.
    • Baraka has an unused forward-flip move where he flipped towards you using his blades as leverage as well as his spinning slash which he got in Trilogy onward.
    • Raiden has an unused possible fatality where he lifted his victim over his head and electrocuted them to death. This later appeared for real in Mortal Kombat 4.
    • Kung Lao's torpedo special sprites can be found as well.
    • One rather odd dummied out sprite is, of all things, the World Wrestling Federation logo, possibly as part of a scrapped advertisement.
  • Irony as She Is Cast: Shao Kahn is a physically imposing figure, towering over all the main fighters. In real life, his actor, Brian Glynn, is significantly shorter than the main cast.
  • No Export for You: The PS1 version was only released in Japan.
  • Port Overdosed: Even more than the original game, given its more refined gameplay made it a better popular choice for compilations or re-releases.
  • Refitted for Sequel: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise.
  • Romance on the Set: Ho-Sung Pak (Liu Kang) and Katalin Zamiar (Kitana) dated while working on the game together; this (and the movie's Ship Tease) is part of the reason why their characters became lovers in later games and movies.
  • Serendipity Writes the Plot: In order to save time on the costume and makeup, Shang Tsung was written as gaining his youthful appearance back for this game.
  • Throw It In!: Noob Saibot's existence in the game — and in turn, the entire franchise — exists because of a bit of petty developer tomfoolery: in the first game, Reptile was snuck into the game with only Ed Boon knowing about his existence before the game was out in arcades, something that got Boon in trouble with John Tobias. For the development of II, all of the dev team were aware of other secret characters (Smoke and Jade), but Boon repeated the stunt anyway by adding the all-black ninja into the game, naming him Boon and Tobias' names spelled backwards as a cheeky nod to the scuffle. No one in the development team other than Boon was aware of Noob Saibot's existence until midway during development of Mortal Kombat 3.
  • Trolling Creator:
    • The test menu for the Arcade version has a counter for "Kano Transformations". The counter is believed to be there just to stir up rumors. This was later referenced in Mortal Kombat 3 with Nightwolf's Friendship, in which he transforms into Raiden with a Mortal Kombat II machine dropping behind him, with one of the sentences saying, "I've Never Seen a Kano Transformation".
    • Occasionally, when Smoke or Jade appear to offer hints to unlock their secret battles, they'll tease the possibility of Ermac showing up in the game. At this point in the series, Ermac was still nothing more than an Urban Legend of Zelda, though one of the decoded messages in the ending translates to "Ermac does not exist."
  • Urban Legend of Zelda: Too many to count, many of which would become Ascended Memes:
    • Animalities were rumored to be in this game. They became a reality in MK3.
    • You could supposedly unlock Sonya, Kano, and a character called Ermac. Sonya and Kano would return to the playable cast in MK3, while Ermac would become an actual character in Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3.
    • Green Liu Kang, a.k.a. "Hornbuckle", and Blaze are the guys you see fighting in the background of The Pit II.
    • There were rumors that you could trigger a stage fatality in The Forest stage that would have one of the trees devour your opponent; this became a reality in Mortal Kombat 9.
  • Wag the Director: Daniel Pesina allegedly took it upon himself to act as a "coach" of sorts during the recording sessions, offering unsolicited suggestions for new moves and sometimes contradicting Ed Boon and John Tobias. This, coupled with him giving an unauthorized interview to a game magazine, ultimately led to him not being asked to return for Mortal Kombat 3, which in turn resulted in Johnny Cage being killed off.
  • What Could Have Been:
    • Baraka's blades were intended to permanently stick out, but the developers thought this gives him an unfair advantage.
    • 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.
    • Originally, the natives of Outworld were going to be all Baraka's race (Tarkatans), and thus, Shao Kahn was meant to resemble him.

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