Ninjas are a common character type featured in the Mortal Kombat series.
Overview
Ninja is a loosely used term in the actual sense of ninjas regarding the Mortal Kombat franchise, thus they are a very prominent group of characters. It is not uncommon for a ninja to possess supernatural powers that gives them the edge over their opponents. From Mortal Kombat to Mortal Kombat Trilogy, ninjas were virtually identical to one another in terms of appearance, save for their color choices, poses and powers. From Mortal Kombat 4 onwards, ninjas were given a better sense of diversity with their designs.
Ninjas
Canon
- Scorpion
- Noob Saibot
- Reptile
- Sub-Zero
- Smoke
- Ermac
- Rain
- Chameleon
- Tremor
- Takeda Takahashi
- Kitana
- Mileena
- Jade
- Khameleon
- Frost
- Skarlet
- Sektor
- Cyrax
Non canon
Behind the scenes
In reality, all of the ninja characters in the first three Mortal Kombat games were all represented by a single actor. The original base costume was of a red color to avoid blending in with the blue background used when filming the characters for the sprites. This method was used because of memory limitations and an attempt to get more playable characters for the roster. The ninja actor had to perform a wider array of moves and multiple fighting stances than the others as they would be "portraying" multiple characters at once. Once the sprites were captured, they were digitally recolored, creating color values to be applied to the numerous characters. These values were programmed and coded to be treated as separate character values, having access to certain sprites and individual special moves to create their identities.
Because of this, there is a possibility to 'unlock' access to all of these sprites to any ninja, granting them different abilities by swapping movesets or give them every single special move. This would later be explored by the Mortal Kombat Trilogy hidden characters Chameleon and Khameleon.
Before Mortal Kombat (2011) was released, it was announced that pre-ordering from certain stores would provide a code to unlock classic ninja outfits, with their Mortal Kombat (1992) outfits for the male ninjas and their Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 outfits for the females. Jade was an exception, with her classic outfit code being provided by purchasing the Blu-ray edition of the Mortal Kombat films. A DLC pack was later released which featured all of the classic outfits from pre ordering the game.
With each DLC character released, two classic outfits would be released with the compatibility packs.
With Skarlet's release, her compatibility pack provided a classic outfits for Cyrax and Sektor, based on their Mortal Kombat 3 outfits.
With Kenshi's release, his compatibility pack provided a classic outfit for Smoke and Noob Saibot, based on their Mortal Kombat II outfits.
With Rain's release, his compatibility pack provided a classic outfit for Kitana and Jade, based on their Mortal Kombat II outfits.
With Freddy Kruger's release, his compatibility pack provided a classic outfit for Sub Zero, based on his Mortal Kombat 3 appearance as well as an outfit based on the classic cyber-ninja outfits for Cyber Sub Zero.
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