The Mortal Kombat series is both famous and infamous for various reasons, but true MK fans can remember every blunder that the franchise was a part of. From poor productions to downright stupid ideas that never should have seen the light of day, this is the Debaser’s Top Ten Worst Mortal Kombat Moments.

10. Ninja Mania

As the franchise continued to grow in popularity, so did the number of guys in different colored masks. Things eventually got so crazy that there were different women and robots in colored masks. It was nearly as bad as the Power Rangers.

Sure, characters such as Rain and Ermac eventually got a worthy background story to make them likable characters, but these guys started as nothing more than filler to expand a roster.

9. Scorpion’s VENGEANCE!

Anyone who is a fan of the series knows Scorpion’s background story. He was killed in cold blood along with his family by the Sub-Zero from the first Mortal Kombat. He later found out that it was Quan Chi who had demanded the slayings, and the hunt began.

Scorpion’s vengeance storyline ended when he became the Chosen Warrior of the Elder Gods. However, many fans were disappointed and downright outraged to find that Scorpion was returned to the tired, old “vengeance” storyline by the MK creative team.

Way to piss off a fanbase.

8. Mortal Kombat: Special Forces

When MK: Special Forces hit shelves, many MK fans were feeling the pain. A poor story, crappy gameplay, and even worse graphics were enough to perform a brutality on any diehard MK fan.

Did I mention that this game was able to introduce YET ANOTHER NINJA?!

7. Noob Glitch – MK4

A big mystery in the franchise was a shadowy character named Noob Saibot. Originally created as a cool extra for MK II with creators Ed Boon and Jon Tobias’ last names, Saibot slowly became a character that fans loved and expected to see.

Plenty of fans wondered who Saibot was and where he came from. Mortal Kombat 4 was able to drop a big hint on us due to a programming flaw in the Noob character.

Saibot didn’t have his own specific fatalities in the game, so existing ones were used. One was an appropriate throwing star fatality borrowed from the Reiko character. The other was Sub-Zero’s deep freeze fatality. Why this one? Was it because they both had the “ninja” look?

We found out just a few games later that Noob Saibot was indeed the Sub-Zero from the first MK. Most smart fans weren’t surprised since the glitch in MK 4 gave the surprise away to anyone paying attention.

6. Quan Chi’s Neck Stretch

There have been some pretty goofy fatalities over the years such as Liu Kang’s falling arcade machine fatality, but perhaps Midway crossed the line with Quan Chi’s neck stretch fatality from Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance.

And there was only one fatality per character in that game. Quan Chi fans had to watch their favorite character suck balls over and over again at the end of matches.

5. Mortal Kombat: Annihilation

Mixed reactions toward the first MK movie somehow called for a sequel that would be based off of Mortal Kombat II and III. It had potential to be a great movie, but what we got was possibly the most laughable video game-based film in history.

Horrible acting and a feeble attempt to shove every character known to man into a relatively short film blended together like peanut butter and lead paint.

4. Mortal Kombat Mythologies

Though Mythologies: Sub-Zero did fill in a lot of missing storyline and prepare us for the release of MK 4, it presented very little for the series. The gameplay was downright awful, and I’ve never seen Sub-Zero fall off of so many cliffs in my life. I literally had to turn the sound down as a kid because my step-dad got tired of hearing Sub-Zero’s death cry as he died, died, died, died, died, died, and died a few more times.

3. No Blood – SNES

Fearing the controversy that surrounded the franchise but unwilling to miss out on a popular port, Nintendo demanded that all blood be removed from the SNES port of Mortal Kombat. They also had a couple of fatalities redone.

The result of this censorship was laughable. Grey puff clouds flew out of the fighters with every hit, and it honestly looks like Kano is stealing his opponents’ wallet and holding it in the air during his heart rip fatality.

This atrocious port was easily overlooked for the much more popular Sega Genesis port that had the infamous “Blood Code.”

2. Mortal Kombat: Armageddon

Fans were eager to see if Armageddon was going to be another MK: Trilogy or possibly even better. What they received was a game that felt oversimplified, empty, and unfinished.

Every character in the series – except for Khameleon for some stupid reason – was brought back for this game with little to no story as to how they got there. Movesets were reduced to one style with a weapon style, and lots of fighting styles and animations were re-used.

The extra features weren’t very attractive either. Motor Kombat wasn’t the gem that Midway had hyped it to be, the Kreate-A-Kharacter gave players the chance to create overtly powerful characters that could juggle other players for hours, and Kreate-a-Fatality was possible the most unpopular feature to ever grace a video game. It was that bad.

Midway, promise us to never make a game like Armageddon again.

AND NUMBER 1!

Mortal Kombat Live Tour

Does anyone remember the MK Live Tour in 1995? Of course you don’t, and you don’t want to. This show of martial arts and display of fail was something that Midway doesn’t say much about. I’m certain that they’d rather forget this ever happened.

The worst part about this live tour was the fact that the actors instructed the audience to buy Mortal Kombat amulets at the concession stand to save the Earth. Too bad nobody took the time to actually make this merchandise to sell.

From the shadows, this has been the Debaser.

*A bit rushed