Way back in 1992, a mere four developers would create one of the most famous fighting game franchises of all time. What was initially conceived as a game starring actor Jean-Claude Van Damme turned into a horror-fantasy fighting game known as Mortal Kombat.
One thing that would set Mortal Kombat apart from other fighting games of the time is they would use live-action characters inste♔ad of hand-drawn characters - a carry over from the games initial concept of featuring Jean-Claude Van Damme. To keep costs down and conserve disk space, some of these live-action characters would be palette swapped to use as other characters. One of these simple palette swaps would become on of the most famous characters in the entire franchise - the ninja known as Scorpion.
A veritable plethora of ninja characters have come out of Mortal Kombat - but only three would truly stand the test of time and appear in the most games. Outside of Sub🧸-Zero and Reptile, one of those ninja characters would be Scorpion.
Not only is Scorpion one of the most popular of Mortal Kombat's ninja characters, he's one of the most popular and oldest characters in Mortal Kombat period. He's been used in almost every game released in the franchise over the course of 25 years. When a fictional character has been around for 25 years, they build up quite a bit of history and many details of the character might fly under the radar. In Scorpion's case, there's quite a bit out there that you probably don't know. Keep reading to find out some of the most interesting tidbits of one of Mortal Kombat's most deadly combatants!
15 ꩲ He's Voiced By The Co-Creator Of Mortal Kombat ꦡ
It is highly unlikely that there is any phrase in video games more well known than Scorpion's "Getta over here!" when using his kunai to pull his opponent towards him for an uppercut. That famous catchphrase was provided by none over than one of Mortal Kombat's own creators, Ed Boon. Not only was Ed the voice for Scorpion in many of the video games, but he also voiced Scorpion in both the Mortal Kombat movie and its sequel Mortal Kombat: Annihilation - though t꧙he physical role in both the games and films would go to other actors.
In addition to lending his voice to Scorpion, Boon lent his name to another character, Noob Saibot. T💦he name of Noob Saibot was created by taking the last names of two of the creators (Ed Boon and John Tobias), spelling them backwards, and putting them together.
14 🅺 He's Responsible For Delaying the First Mortal Kombat Film 🌸
Mortal Kombat was a highly anticipated film in its day. Back in 1995, video games hadn't quite built up their reputation for being turned into notoriously bad movies. Heck, Mortal Kombat would spawn a sequel, a television series, and an animated series. To this day it's the fifth highest grossing video game movie of all time - beating even the Resident Evil films.
The film was originally supposed to be released in the first quarter of 1995, but there was a hold up that pushed the film to August of 1995. The hold up involved putting more ♛work into the figh💞t scene between Johnny Cage and Scorpion.
13 ꦕ He Visits DC's Injustice Universe 🍰
Many readers might remember the game Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe. The game pitted characters from the Mortal Kombat franchise against some of the more popular characters (at the time) from the world of Detective Comics. The DC characters would eventually get their very own fighting game known as Injustice: Gods Among Us.
Injustice had a good deal of DLC, allowing users to add several characters to the already satisfactory roster. While most of these characters were from the DC comic books, we also got one familiar face from outside the world of DC: Mortal Kombat's Scorpion.
Granted, Scorpion wasn't shoe-horned into continuity, his backstory reveals that he had to teleport to the Injustice dimension from the Netherrealm.
12 ▨ ꦉ He Hated Mortal Kombat: Annihilation
Okay. Scorpion himself didn't hate Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. He hasn't seen the film and he has a couple of really✃ good reasons:
The first reason - He's a character in the films. He lives theᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ♎ᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚ films.
The second reason - He isn't a real person.
All that being said, someone who practically is Scorpion admitted to hating the second film though. That someone is Scorpion's voice actor and creator, Ed Boon. , Ed Boon was asked what his best and worst Mortal Kombat moments were. Boon would cite Mortal Kombat Annihilation as the lowest moment for the famous franchise.
A "3% Rotten" rating on Rotten Tomatoes seems to agree wit🌃h Boon's sentimen🅠t.
11 His Spear Is "Aliv✨e?"ཧ
Some of you reading this might take issue with this claim. In the games, the spear is most definitely a normal weapon and does not appear to be alive, have sentience, nor does it appear to move in ways that isn't done specifically by Scorpion himself. Fortunately, there are other iterationsও of the character and the Scorpion of the films most definitely wields a spear that appears to be alive.
In the films, the spear emerges from Scorpion's body as if it's a supernatural power. When the spear comes from Scorpion's wrist, it has definite bi💜ological features. It seems to make some kind of animal-like noise, it snaps its jaws, and seems to be able to move in directions that it chooses, as if it's seeking out its prey.
10 He And His Mortal En𒈔emy Are One And The Same 🍌
Scorpion and Sub-Zero are most definitely not the same character in terms of Mortal Kombat's story. In that regard they are different people. While they may not be the same p𒁃erson wearing🌊 a different costume in the fictional world, in the real world they have been portrayed by the same person on a number of occasions.
In the first two games, both Sub-Zero and Scorpion were played by actor Daniel Pesina. In Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 and Mortal Kombat 4, the ꦓrole for🍸 Sub-Zero and Scorpion would go to John Turk.
As time went on, the characters would be created by designers and live actors and actresses would no longer be ♉used.
9 He's Deeply Concerned With Conserving Disk Space 💃
There's actually a good reason Scorpion and the ninja characters from the Mortal Kombat series were all played by one actor: they were really just palette changes of the same character. This allowed the creators to con🐠serve disk space and avoid making completely new designs for all the characters.
A number of fighting games used this method of palette swapping at the time. Street Fighter's Ryu and Ken were palette swaps, but they were given different heads to look more distinguishable. Ken and Ryu had all the same moves as each other. Even the execution of their moves were the same. Mortal Kombat, on the other hand, made sure to give each charac🐠ter their o♏wn moves, making them seem more unique to players.
8 He And Reptile (Used To Be) Twins 🎃
As we've said before, the ninja characters in the early days of Mortal Kombat were all played by the same individual and their different colors were just the developers using palette swaps to get more out of what they had. In the first game, the green palette swap known as Reptile coཧuld be unlocked as a hidden bonus character, but could not be played by the player. This early version of Reptile was not the reptilian creature we know today. That look became increasingly reptilian as time went on.
In the first game, Reptile had a combination of moves borrowed from both Sub-Zero and Scorpion. This means that the first version of Reptile would take💎 off his mask and reveal the same exact skull head as Scorpion.
7 He's S💖ecretly Johnny Cage 🍬
In addition to the same actor playing the ninja characters throughout the early installments of Mortal Kombat, sometimes actors would play multiple characters. This wasn't just relegated to the games. To save money, the film Mortal Kombat Annihilation would cast one actor in two or more roles.
In the first two Mortal Kombat games, a similar tactic wa♉s used. Daniel Pesina didn't just play Scorpion and Sub-Zero because they were a palette swap, he also played Johnny Cage. If you ever wondered what Scorpion would look like if he didn't have a skull for a head, just think of Johnny Cage.
6 ﷺ He's Already Dead ✱
Scorpion has a major advantage over all the opponents he faces in the deadly tournament known as Mortal Kombat - he can't be killed. He's already dead and relegated to Hell. Well, not quite Hell. Later it would be referred to as the Nethe꧂rrealm. Despite specifying that Scorpion isn't actually from Hell, his supernatural fire is still known as hellfire. Regardless of what you want to call it, Scorpion is most definitely dead and living in some sort of other plane.
Theoretically, there is only one way an opponent could permanently kill Scorpion in a Mortal Kombat tournament and that would be t🔴o use an ability that would destroy his actual soul.