‘Mortal Kombat’ Legacy: Did ‘Injustice’ Pull A Fatality On The Game Series?

The Mortal Kombat legacy has been a long and winding path, but could the TV series actually outlast the games? Did Injustice: Gods Among Us finally “finish” the plethora of Mortal Kombat characters under NetherRealm?

Back in the early 90s, Mortal Kombat actually started as a game Midway was working on between major releases. However, when we saw the digitized versions of live actors and buckets of blood flying in every direction, it became the “bad boy” competitor for then-favorite Street Fighter II.

It only took three games to make us realize that the concept was getting a little old and we started wondering why we were playing it. After the fifth main game in the series brought it back on consoles, we started to see the charm again. It ditched the “realistic” approach and instead went for a darker tone of 3D animation. After a few more games, we started getting tired of it again.

It was around this time that the Mortal Kombat legacy necessitated a “reboot.” Even though the story tied it in with the previous games in the series, much like the Star Trek films, the game successfully gave us what we wanted out of the game series once more. The bone-crunching effects and brutal fatalities among the Mortal Kombat characters made it the most critically acclaimed game in the series.

With no legitimately new game from the series since then, we have to look at what NetherRealm, the company who took over for Midway, has done since then. Injustice: Gods Among Us is the closest we can find to a follow-up, and instead of repeating the mistakes from Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe, they simply brought two Mortal Kombat characters over to fight among Batman, Superman, the Joker, and Lex Luthor. Scorpion ended up pulling a crossover, though Sub-Zero was in the animated intro explaining how he got there.

Now, as previously reported by The Inquisitr, Injustice is getting a sequel in 2015. There don’t seem to be any confirmed plans to unleash another new Mortal Kombat game aside from the PS4 exclusive update to the 2011 hit. It appears NetherRealm has decided that they have more sales potential in a fighting game with the DC Comics superheroes than by continuing the Mortal Kombat legacy. It looks like the executive decision was to pull a fatality on the long-running game series because fighters Sub-Zero and Scorpion together can’t sell as much as Batman alone.

Could Kiefer Sutherland‘s voice work have been for the just-announced Injustice sequel, and not for a new Mortal Kombat?

Until we hear more from NetherRealm about it, we can only assume that the Mortal Kombat legacy is dead.