Mortal Kombat

Shao Kahn is certinally not this series’s Darkseid. The guy got two games with him as a primary big bad with both ending with his ass kicked. Afterwords it became a case of The Big Bad Shuffle until Armageddon ended with Shao being the one on top, leading to him being the villian for MK 9 but even that game showed that he only got that far in the rebooted universe because Quan Chi was helping him out on Shinnok’s orders.

Edited by Pokesamus on Oct 5th 2021 at 5:28:53 AM

If getting your ass kicked disqualifies you from being the Big Bad then Mortal Kombat doesn't have a Big Bad because every single one of them got their ass kicked in the game they were introduced in.

That Shao Kahn was made the main villain in MK 9 to me says what NRS thought of his character. Shinnok followed. Then we had Kronika who herself was getting played by Shang Tsung who got played by Liu Kang.

Who ironically enough has kicked everybody's ass at least once, including his own zombified ass, and avenged himself over the guys who killed him.

So I guess Liu Kang is technically the Big Bad of Mortal Kombat. Motherfucker even let MK happen again in the Sacred Timeline.

Edited by FOFD on Oct 5th 2021 at 9:39:13 AM

Not sure what you're getting at here, but Shao is the most frequent antagonist. The only one who comes close is Shang Tsung.

Not to mention the comparison to Darkseid can't help when Shao he literally fused him with back in MK VS DC.

If any character suffered Villain Decay, it was Shang Tsung not Shao Kahn. Kahn at least won some fights in 9 and 11's main story. Tsung didn't reclaim any of his original menace until Aftermath.

Isn't it amazing how a couple of losses from a non-main character make you suffer a Villain Decay?

I remember how MK 3's intro stated the Sindel Revival plot of MK 3 was all Shao Kahn's idea, one he had cooking for ages, but then MK 9 retconned it into a Quan Chi plot on the spot.

Uh those two were separate timelines. So it's possible in the reboot it was Quan Chi and the original had it as Shao.

I think that's what they meant.

I mean the DC vs. MK is all about how Shao Kahn is the ultimate evil of the setting.

Yeah it was. Shao got some decay even before that. In the same game where they literally feed Shang to Sindel even.

x4. I mean, you could probably split the difference and have it be Khan's plan originally, but then he had to abandon it when Sindel died, but then Quan Chi offered to bring her back, so then the plan is now on the table again.

If you mean the original timeline, Kahn's whole plan was about resurrecting Sindel in order to weakn the barriers keeping him from Earth. He can't just abandon a plan involving resurrecting her when she dies, that's the whole kickoff point. I mean I guess reboot timeline but that still factors into Kahn's decay as a master planner AND barbarian dark lord.

Also, Trilogy partially retconned the MK 2 tourney into a diversion to allow Kahn's plan to succeed.

Edited by MightyKombat on Oct 5th 2021 at 2:09:47 PM

Other than Quan Chi's presence I have no real reason to believe that MK 9 is how the original timeline played out.

Well, before they retcon it to not be the case.

I imagine it's similar but not identical.

That game outright states he is Shinnok's lackey.

Quan Chi to Shao Kahn: "Shinnok will be displeased by your inability to take Earthrealm."

Khan isnt the ultimate evil, he is the MOST inconic one, people often confuse the two in fiction(which is why joker always hijack everything in batman stories), and yeah he have suffer a form of decay in the same he is often play as "THE conqueror of everything", is like thanos suddenly become just another villian rather than ONE villian.

Also wildleopard is right, shang tsung is biggest ofender: he lost three times in MK 1 to 3, get send to cobalc mines in MK 4 and get punch by liu kang and them lose to quan chi(and if everything he recive more damage from raiden in the MKD trailer) he dies in MKD(is very imply quan chi didnt) and lost again in the end.

Aftermath is pretty much THE biggest return to tsung and probably is final shot depending of what going to do afterwards.

Funny enough, Battle of the Realms actually emphasizes that point. Despite how powerful & threatening Shao is, Shinnok was ultimately the bigger threat. Well, more like the One Being, but that's beside the point.

Ed Boon shares a behind-the-scenes clip about the creation of Scorpion's iconic spear move.

Oh yeah, quite a few NRS guys have tweeted about old behind the scenes MK facts. I think John Tobias said the old plan for Outworld was that it was a weird patchwork of realms Shao Kahn had conquered, while Daniel Pesina said the idea for the animation on Sub-Zero's ice shot move involved him pulling moisture out of the air to freeze into a projectile.

Old plan? Isn't that how it's always portrayed?

Yeah but from what I gather I think the idea was for that to be much more visible in a way. Sure would make Shao even more menacing and fucked up.,

Ed Boon coming up with an iconic move for a fighting game is exactly the same as a child mashing his action figures together and making “pshew! pshew!” sounds with his mouth

Just want to leave this here for the people who go "Shao Kahn is a jobber who was never impressive or threatening to anyone."

Blame that on the new continuity. Old continuity Shao Kahn was pretty damn baller from masterminding the Sindel resurrection plot to having a clone on standby incase Shang Tsung and Quan Chi went to gank him.

Oh and did we forget the entire point of Raiden's time fuckery was because Shao Kahn won Armageddon?

And after getting yeeted by Onaga.