The Mortal Kombat Fight That Fans Thought Would Be Much Different

Mortal Kombat brought most of the series’ iconic fighters to the big screen. The original game’s characters were almost all present, delivering cool reimaginings of Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Kano, Sonya Blade, Raiden, Liu Kang, Reptile, Goro and Shang Tsung, though the absence of egotistical nut-punchin’ movie star Johnny Cage was sorely felt. Furthermore, mixed in among these were a couple of fighters who even I didn’t recognize.

I’ve played every game in the series, but I was scratching my head at the appearance of devil-winged Nitara and man-mountain Reiko. We didn’t have time to get to know the pair too well, either, as Reiko had his skull smashed in by Jax and Nitara was bisected in an awesome fatality involving Kung Lao’s razor-brimmed hat. Now, it turns out that at least one of these no-name fighters might have once been destined for bigger things, as fans have noticed that Nitara had a larger part in a script that was leaked back in 2018 and thus, were expecting her fight to go down differently.

“Correct me if I’m wrong but wasn’t Nitara the one who killed Kung Lao in the 2018 script?” wrote Reddit user DonPinstripelli, citing a leaked MK movie screenplay. They add: “She definitely had a larger role then. They probably got cold feet with her, thinking she wasn’t well known to get all that spotlight.”

Presumably, they used these jobbers for these fights because nobody would care if they were killed. Nitara’s last in-game bout was in 2006’s Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, which I dimly remember playing back on the PlayStation 2. After all, if they’d used genuinely popular characters, then fans would have been upset that they’d been dispatched so quickly.

Here’s hoping that Mortal Kombat 2 brings forward some Kombatants from the recent games. Sure, it’d be great to see classic-era characters like Baraka, Sindel and Sheeva, but I’d love Cassie Cage, Ferra/Torr and (my favorite) insectoid assassin D’Vorah to show up. With the next film’s action likely taking us into Outworld for a fighting tournament proper, we’ll hopefully see a budget increase and some of the more monstrous fighters involved.