A Fatality is a gameplay feature in the Mortal Kombat series of fighting video games. It is a finishing move in which the victor of the final round in a match inflicts a brutal and morbid execution on their defeated opponent. Fatalities are performed after the announcer says "Finish Him/Her" by players entering, within a short timeframe, specific button and joystick combinations while positioned a specific distance from the opponent. This feature is one of the most notable features of the Mortal Kombat series and has caused a large cultural impact and controversies.
Contents
Conception
While creating Mortal Kombat, Ed Boon and John Tobias started with the idea of Street Fighter II-like system and retained many of its conventions but tweaked others. The most notable additions were graphic blood effects, more brutal fighting techniques, and especially the fatal finishing moves (this was a novelty as the traditional fighting games ended with the loser simply knocked unconscious and the victor posing for the players), although the 1987 fighting game Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior had previously featured blood and beheadings. According to Boon, it started with an idea to enable the player to hit a dizzied opponent at the end of the match with a "free hit", and that idea "quickly evolved into something nasty". According to Tobias: "Our first idea was to use them as a finishing move for final boss Shang Tsung, who was going to pull out his sword and behead his opponent. Then we thought, 'What if the player could do that to his opponent?' When we watched players react to the Fatalities, we knew we had no choice but to give them more." Former Midway Games programmer Mark Turmell stated that initially no one at Midway expected players to find the Fatalities in the game.
Gameplay
Unlike special moves, a Fatality may require certain distances and quick button sequences in order to achieve the desired result. Usually, every character has their own special Fatality that must be performed at a certain distance from the opponent, the three distances being: close (means that the finishing move won't work unless the player is right next to the opponent), sweep (means that the player should stand a step or two away from the opponent, but still within the distance that a sweeping low kick should hit) and far (means at least one jump's length away from the opponent).
Each character has signature Fatalities. Traditionally for the main and important characters of the games their Fatalities are usually a reflection of either their storyline or their special abilities: e.g., Sub-Zero's Fatalities have traditionally involved the use of his powers of ice (though his spine rip was found to be the most famous of the Fatalities), whereas Scorpion's storyline of a hellspawn ninja spectre involves the use of setting someone ablaze or using his famous spear. The number of individual Fatalities varies depending upon the game; while characters in Mortal Kombat and Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance had only one, Mortal Kombat II and Mortal Kombat 3 and its updates (Mortal Kombat Trilogy and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3) featured as many as four.
Cultural impact
The Fatalities were featured in ScrewAttack's "Top 10 OMGWTF Moments" due to the competition it gave to other games including Street Fighter II and how it popularized the arcades, as well as in machinima.com's list of top ten gaming memes. The 2012 film Wreck-It Ralph shows Mortal Kombat's Kano performing his signature heart-ripping Fatality move on a zombie.
By 1996, "Fatality" had become a generic gaming term for a lethal finishing move, including the official termed Fatals in the Killer Instinct series. In the game ClayFighter 63⅓ the Fatalities were parodied in the form of Claytality. "Fatalities" also expanded into the shooter genre, most notably in the Gears of War series as "Executions".
Variations
In many games in the franchises there are also different types of Fatalities and Finishers:
Animality
This finisher allows the player to morph into an animal and maul their opponent. This style of Fatality debuted in Mortal Kombat 3. According to Boon, his team "listened to what the players said about MKII and the Animalities that they thought were in there but really weren't. To answer all these rumors, we put Animalities in MKIII [sic]."
In order to perform an Animality, the player must first grant his opponent Mercy, the act which revives the opponent in lieu of delivering a final blow or performing a Fatality by restoring a small amount of health: should the opponent be defeated again, an Animality may be performed.
Babality
Introduced in Mortal Kombat II, the Babality turns an opponent into an infant version of the character. Sometimes the opponent will wear a miniature version of the clothes he or she wore when fully-grown, complete with smaller versions of accessories such as Raiden's hat or Johnny Cage's shades. In MK3 and its updates, the generic green "Babality!!" text and the sound of a baby crying used in MKII is replaced with pastel colored alphabet blocks and a short lullaby with the end portion of Rock-a-bye-baby. Their initial appearance in Mortal Kombat II Revision 2.1 came with some glitches including one that allowed players to perform attacks after the Babality was performed.
Babalities were introduced as a deliberately absurd counter-argument to the controversy that the original received for its violent content, and a tamer counterpart to the typical Fatality. Some fans found them humorous and enjoyable, while others felt they were an unwelcome, out-of-character intrusion in what is otherwise a "serious" game. The moves were later dropped in an effort to abate this criticism. The Babalities, however, made a return in the relaunch game, featuring special animations for each character (for example, baby Reptile comes out of an egg and baby Raiden plays with lightning).
Brutality
Introduced in Mortal Kombat Trilogy and the Super NES and Genesis versions of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, this finisher allowed players to perform a combo which would cause the opponent to explode. Brutalities were not very popular, as they were extremely difficult to accomplish, requiring the player to memorize and perform a special 11-hit combo. Many felt the pay-off was lacking with the only result being a fiery explosion where the victim disappears and an unrealistic amount of bone and flesh (including several rib cages and skulls) are sent flying and covering most of the screen (in some versions, the bone and flesh flies completely offscreen).
This finisher did not appear in another game until Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, in which it wasn't explicitly used as a finisher, but rather as a power-up. A move similar to the Brutality also appeared in Mortal Kombat: Deception, in the form of a Fatality of Li Mei: her Fatality was to rapidly strike the opponent repeatedly, then to step back and pose as her opponent twitches for a moment, before exploding in a pile of gore. Brutalities make a return appearance in the 2015 title Mortal Kombat X, featured as enhanced versions of certain moves used as the finishing blow in the decisive round of a fight.
Faction Kill
Introduced in Mortal Kombat X, the fighter chosen performs a unique fatality pertaining to what faction the player is part of in the game. Each faction has five faction kills, however the player has to play continuously for one single faction to reveal every faction kill available to that particular faction.
Friendship
The fighter performs an act of kindness, leaving the opponent unharmed at the end of the fight. These actions include Sub-Zero making a snowman, Noob Saibot throwing a bowling ball and hitting a few pins, Stryker holding out a stop sign as if to stop traffic and allowing all the other fighters to run past, or Jax taking out a jump rope and using it. Developers described the inclusion of Friendships as "a counter to all the blood and gore", saying they wanted a different aspect to the game. In MKII, Shao Kahn would announce "Friendship... Friendship?", while in MK3 and MK:T he would say "Friendship... Friendship, Again?"
Hara-Kiri
The Hara-Kiri (which is Japanese for a certain type of ritual suicide, and literally means belly cut; even though Kenshi is the only character who uses the Hara-Kiri in this form) is a move in which the losing player kills him/herself upon defeat at the end of the last match, rather than be finished off by his/her opponent. Examples of Hara-Kiris are Sindel performing a back flip and landing head first, Liu Kang internally combusting, Kabal stabbing himself between his eyes, and Darrius crushing his own head. It is the first time in the series in which the defeated player is allowed to perform a finishing move. The maneuver debuted in Deception but has not been included in any subsequent series installments.
Although it was called just a Fatality in-game, the first example of a suicidal finishing move in the series was actually Cyrax's "self-destruct" move from MK3 and Mortal Kombat Gold: Cyrax, a cyborg, enters a code on to his arm panel and moments later explodes along with his opponent in a manner reminiscent of the ending of the first Predator movie. Smoke went farther with his Fatality, since he destroys the whole planet (and every living being on it) with giant bombs. In MK Gold, Cyrax adopted this Fatality together with his own, while Smoke adopted Cyrax's self-destruct as his Hara-Kiri in Deception.
Heroic Brutality
Heroic Brutalities appear in the Midway/DC Comics crossover game Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe as exclusive finishing moves for the DC heroes. While they are similar to Fatalities, a Heroic Brutality doesn't kill an opponent, since normally the DC heroes don't kill people. These can range from somewhat gruesome like Green Lantern's, in which he crushes his enemy in a bubble of green energy breaking all of their bones, to rather comical such as The Flash's, where he lifts the enemy into the air with a tornado and simply punches them down. Heroic Brutalities are not to be confused with the Brutalities of MK3, as they require hit combos similar to the normal Fatality hit combo. Given the fact that they are the least violent non-parody finishing moves in Mortal Kombat history, Heroic Brutalities were not well received among either the MK series' fandom or the DC series' fandom community, as even the DC comics themselves are often far more brutal.
Kreate-A-Fatality
For Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, the Fatality concept was completely revised. In all previous games, finishing moves were in the form of a button combo, activating a scripted animation sequence. For MK:A, the old system was replaced with a new Kreate-A-Fatality, or "Kustom-Chain-Fatality" system. After defeating an opponent in two rounds (with default settings), players are given a limited amount of time to perform one of several violent moves (such as ripping an organ out) attributed to a button and direction combination. The time then resets and the player can perform a second move, but the timebar decreases more rapidly after each move. It is also possible to "fail" the Fatality by running out of time before performing a final finishing move (such as ripping the opponent's head off). Once the player reaches 10 chains, he/she must use a finisher or else the Fatality sequence will stop and the player will not receive a rank or reward. If time runs out before the player can end the chain with a final fatal move, no rank or reward is given and the Fatality is not counted, regardless of how many moves were completed.
This concept has been met with a mixed reaction, with some fans and critics preferring the more interactive nature and freedom of the Kreate-a-Fatality system, and others missing the previous games' character-specific ending moves and alternatives to killing the opponent. Originally, there were individual character-specific Kreate-a-Fatality moves for each character, but this feature was dropped, reportedly due to such a feat's infeasibility (especially in regards to the Kreate-A-Character option, which individual moves would not translate to). This kind of fatality has only been in this game.
Stage Fatality
Stage Fatalities brought environment interaction within the series, occurring when a player uses a part of the stage or map to execute a finishing move that is not a standard character Fatality. Some examples of Stage Fatalities are having the victim fall into a pool of acid or a pit of spikes, or to be run over by a subway train; the stage then does not darken. Stage Fatalities are present in the series from the first Mortal Kombat, though are absent from MK: Deadly Alliance.
MK: Deception features more Stage Fatalities, renamed Death Traps, than any previous Mortal Kombat game. A special button combination is no longer required, as the opponent only needs to be either standing or hit in a particular spot on the stage. Unlike previous Stage Fatalities, Death Traps can be initiated anytime during a round and only require the opponent be hit into them, meaning an instant victory. However, if they are not executed in the decisive round, the fight does not end, going on to the next round. This action acts as a ring out. It was possible for some Death Traps to kill both fighters simultaneously, in which case the round went to the player who had taken the least damage, or Player 1 if both players had full life bars.
Traditional Stage Fatalities, seen since the original MK game through MK4, made a return in the new Mortal Kombat. Button combinations are once again used to perform Stage Fatalities.