Retro games fans got a treat in the most recent episode of The Last of Us. Ellie was given a very special night in a disused mall, with the highlight the reveal of an arcade crammed with some of the best games of all-time. Hits like Daytona USA, Joust, Galaga, and Final Fight were all there, though Ellie and Riley only had eyes for Midway’s hit 1993 fighting smash Mortal Kombat II.
Some attentive gamers had a bone to pick with the show’s depiction of the classic, though. Ellie pulled off Mileena’s maneater Fatality, which is performed by holding High Kick for 5 seconds and releasing the button. However, she seemed to mash some random buttons and the move still appeared anyway. So… plot hole?
Not according to seasoned Mortal Kombat fans. It turns out there are two ways of performing this Fatality:
Twitch streamer MickyWinz showed this in action, proving that the button mashing we heard could indeed have been the correct input.
Showrunner Neil Druckmann also went into detail on the official The Last of Us podcast as to how Ellie and Riley could even know the Mortal Kombat II moves:
“This is something we talked quite a lot about; as they collect totems from this old world, one of the things that used to be really popular were video game magazines. If they were infatuated with this game, Ellie would collect anything to do with this game, including these magazines that listed the moves that they would memorize in case they would ever play it.”
So, as should be the case for a show based on a hit video game, it seems The Last of Us depicted Mortal Kombat II being played completely correctly.
The Last of Us airs Sundays on HBO.
