Mortal Kombat Almost Didn't Have Fatalities

thegamer.com:

Believe it or not, fatalities almost didn't make it into Mortal Kombat. As revealed by Ed Boon on the series' 30th anniversary, fatalities only came about when he and the team were messing about during development, experimenting with what players could do in battle.

This revelation comes from an interview between Ed Boon and YouTuber Brian Tong. Their conversation gives us some insight into the creation of the iconic first Mortal Kombat game, and how its short development cycle birthed one of the most successful franchises in gaming.

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Originally, the only character to get a fatality was the final boss, Shang-Tsung. He wouldn't have even made the most of his magical abilities and would have simply beheaded the player. However, mid-development, Boon and the team thought it would be fun to put this power in the player's hands, and started coming up with gruesome ways we could finish off our enemies.

"Shang Tsung, the final boss character in the game, had this move where when he would defeat you, he'd [get] a big sword and he would cut your head off," says Boon, speaking about an earlier version of the game. "So it was going to be just the boss, but just goofing around one time we made Johnny Cage duck down and uppercut the guy. And then we just used the head animation [from Shang Tsung], but you could do it."

Boon continues: "When we put that in...everyone lost their minds. Half the people were saying, 'you can't do that!' and the other half was going, 'you can't not do that!'".

Despite that initial pushback, Boon says that he knew he was "onto something" because it was generating a buzz in the office. And thanks to that reaction to what was meant to be