Extra Ribcages, Eagles, And Pandas: How Some Of Mortal Kombat 1's Best Animalities Were Made

It only took 30 years to make a comeback, but at long last, Mortal Kombat players can once again unleash the animal within. With the release of the Khaos Reigns expansion, Mortal Kombat 1 players got a nostalgic update with the new animalities that were added to the game, allowing them to perform grisly finishers in ferocious style.

Naturally, some of these are imaginatively grotesque and are a showcase of creative carnage. We recently spoke to Josh Slingerland, principal artist and cinematics director at NetherRealm, about how some of these memorable animalities came about, from Johnny Cage riffing on Hollywood to Mileena making us want to lose our lunch with the graphic brutality of her mantis deathblow.

The highlight here is arguably Peacemaker, as the DC anti-hero shines with an animality powered by patriotism and a hatred for the metric system. Here's a closer look at how his finisher--and several others--were created.

"He's a larger-than-life character who was super cool to work on. Some of the original ideas, we had Eagly firing a rocket launcher instead of dropping a grenade. We just ended up going with the grenade, we were just able to get some cooler, more-interesting camera shots and it broke things up from Peacemaker shooting the guns. Another really fun thing that our cinematic lead animator brought up at the last minute was to keep Peacemaker's helmet on his eagle."

"It helped differentiate the two on screen, but it also made it even more comical. A bird with a helmet on, right?"

"If you've ever watched the show, you know that we also really tried to showcase Eagly and Peacemaker as much as possible. We knew they were gonna have this really cool epic tag team kind of fatality coming up, and we really wanted to showcase something fun to start things off. And that shot just came together so well."

"We do pretty deep-dive stuff, but there's a lot of interesting stuff with eagles and shooting guns. You'd be surprised!"

"Once I saw everything kind of together, like the final audio, final picture, I just can't not think of Peacemaker screaming "What's a kilometer?" as he's shooting his double machine guns at the victim. We just wanted to go big with him and we had a lot of fun coming up with something patriotic to throw in just to make this absolutely over the top. It's just hilarious, the last thing you see is Eagly coming in with the American flag. It's such a cherry on top."

"With Johnny, we knew right away we wanted to do something kind of Hollywood-inspired. That's always kind of been Johnny's thing with us and we've always had a lot of fun with him, kind of breaking the fourth wall and just being the movie actor with a lot of his fatalities in the past."

"So as a group, we sat down and started coming up with a list of the big movie animals throughout the years. And then we kind of just started striking off the ones [where] the kills maybe weren't as iconic. Jaws was on that shortlist, Hitchcock's The Birds was on there, and Jurassic Park's T-Rex. There were some good ones on there; we just ended up going with Jaws. That one was so much fun to work on."

"We just knew that one had to be really gruesome and really to knock that one out of the park. The FX team killed it with slobber and stuff like that. No pun intended: They just absolutely murdered that one."

"That one was a lot of fun and was challenging. What is a pufferfish going to do, right? I couldn't find any videos of pufferfish killing people online. The build-up, we just knew that once we kind of started thinking a little bit more about whatever goes inside you, it just turned into something awesome."

"We just knew the ending was gonna be such an awesome payoff with it just exploding outwards. And the fun thing about that, we went a little old school with the art on the explosion. I think we had like two or three rib cages popping out."

"It just felt right, a hippo and Geras, right? The sheer power of that animal, I don't think a lot of people know how dangerous and fast these hippos can be. So that was really fun to kind bring that forward and just show off how strong they can be.

"I also love the ending there, how when it howls the head pops out of the mouth there at the last minute. I have no idea if that happens in real life, but it does in the MK universe!"

"This one was so much fun just because of how pandas just lumber around and are pretty carefree. Pandas are one of my favorite animals, and I recently was at the zoo watching them just kind of sit around, roll around the ground, taking their time eating their bamboo. How can we work that into an animality? And it just dawned on me."

"What if it just almost accidentally ends up killing the victim at the end? It's got the arms ready to eat, but it just plops back downwards, and it just so happens, the victim's head is right there for her to crush. It just worked out great. It feels so much in character for a panda."

"The hummingbird just fits so well, it's compact and graceful yet very strong. The wings themselves even look like her fan blades, it's pretty cool."

"Drinking from the blood fountain was a last-minute thing we added. Right as we were going into VFX, someone brought up [the idea] that birds kind of go to water fountains and drink from it. So what if a geyser of blood came out as the victim peeled apart? I'm like 'chef's kiss.'"

"We did a ton of hours, deep-diving on different animals. David Attenborough's voice will forever be in my brain, God bless him. After hours and hours of watching BBC Earth we got really got deep in these animals."

"Bees absolutely freak me out, so that one took a lot to kind of get through, but it turned out great and it fit her pretty well. She's an assassin. Bees are quick--in and out. That was one that fitted her pretty well."