It's been a year since NetherRealm Studios' Ghostface from Scream, the T-1000 from Terminator 2, and Conan the Barbarian.

Khaos Reigns adds fully playable versions of two previously Kameo-only fighters, Cyrax and Sektor, along with Noob Saibot, to Mortal Kombat 1's roster. While including characters that were already featured in MK1 in some form as paid DLC isn't the most exciting addition some long-time series fans could imagine, it will be undoubtedly be fun to get ahold of Noob Saibot's shadow and portal combos again. Khaos Reigns also brings back Animalities for all players, a feature introduced in Mortal Kombat 3 but used surprisingly sparingly since.

Recently, Screen Rant spoke with Ed Boon, co-creator of Mortal Kombat, to discuss Khaos Reigns, past games, the return of Animalities, what players should expect in Mortal Kombat 1's future, and whether or not Scorpion is still his favorite Mortal Kombat character.

The following interview has been edited and slightly reorganized for clarity and length.

How Mortal Kombat Looks Back To Go Forward

Ed Boon Discusses The Past, Present, and Future of MK

Screen Rant: Without spoiling too much, because there are people who might be waiting for Khaos Reigns to come out and I don't want to talk directly about the end of Mortal Kombat 1, but in the last section of the game there's a lot of randomized character mashups. Was there ever any thought about creating an Armageddon-style Kreate-A-Fighter? Because it feels like it's there on the back-end.

Ed Boon: You know, until you said it, I didn't even think of having that be something to give to players to do. It was always something that we put together.

The challenge with Armageddon, at the end of the day, was that with a Mortal Kombat character, there are certain things that are expected of it, right? They have to have special moves, and now they have to have intros and a super move, but the big one is fatalities. And I think perhaps the biggest criticism we got with Armageddon was that every character didn't have the classic two big showcase fatalities.

We made this thing where you can string together fatality moves and come up with your own fatality. And at the end of the day, the main reason was because we couldn't do two fatalities times, I don't know how many characters we had, you know, 50 or something like that, so 100 fatalities, let's say. It was just physically impossible unless we took another two years to make the game.

So, in order to do a true Mortal Kombat character, for Mortal Kombat 1, with the kind of kit-bash features that we have, it would be really challenging to make true fatalities for those Kreate-A-Fighter characters.

Screen Rant: I do the Kreate-A-Fighter conversations that were happening back when Armageddon released. I always kind of enjoyed how you could chain them up to get more and more [hits] as you went on.

Ed Boon: I thought that we had something going there. But had we added that as well as two fatalities, two real fatalities, I think it would have been embraced a little bit more. I think a lot of players interpreted it as this feature replacing fatalities.

Ironically, every time we didn't deliver two fatalities per player, like, you know, Deadly Alliance was another one. We only had one fatality per character. It is like, DO NOT mess with that. You can go to three, but don't go any less than two. That's just expected.

Screen Rant: Speaking of going to three, Animalities are coming back as a free update, not just for the Khaos Reigns but for everybody. Can you speak a little bit about why you wanted Animalities to come back, and also is the process going to be the same? As in, am I still going to have to perform a Mercy first?

Ed Boon: No, no, no, no. That was one of the, I wouldn't call it a debate, but a difference of opinion that we had. The design team wanted to have all that criteria to do an Animality. And I guess I made the call to say, no, they're just going to be like fatalities. You do the move, you get it off, because there's a lot of circumstances that have to [happen], to set up the Mercy and all that stuff. So it's going to just be, you just have to win the fight, and it's a third fatality, kind of like you described it.

Screen Rant: And so what was the idea [to bring Animalities back]? Because from what we've seen of the Animalities so far, it looks like it's not going to be all the same Animalities that were in Mortal Kombat 3 and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. And there were definitely some where... was it Scorpion that turned into the penguin and laid an exploding egg?

Ed Boon: I was literally, that was the next sentence I was going to say, was they're not going to all be the same. For example, Scorpion will not turn into a penguin and do an exploding egg. There are certainly references to some of the older ones that we made, and some characters do turn into the [same] ones that they did.

It's much more of a spectacle, and just as a little bit of a background with production, we had this much [holds two fingers up indicating a very small amount] memory left to do all the Animalities in Mortal Kombat 3. And so we had to go down to 4-bit images, so everything was very low res, not many colors at all. It was very rudimentary. This time we're really going all out. It's a big production for each one.

And to your other question, in Mortal Kombat 9, we brought back Babalities. And then in MK11, we brought back Friendship moves. So we're just kind of digging into the past. And so Babalities, Friendships, what else is there? Animalities. So we decided to go all-out with those, to kind of show these are the Animalities we would have made had we had unlimited resources back in '95 or whenever MK3 came out.

Screen Rant: And with those Animalities, is that going to be just for the base characters? Or is also going to be for the DLCs and guest characters? Like, is Homelander from The Boys going to have an Animality?

Ed Boon: Yeah, everybody gets one. Um, Homelander's is crazy. It is a reference to the show.

Screen Rant: [worriedly] Is... is it a cow?

Ed Boon: No, no, no.

Screen Rant: Oh, good.

Ed Boon: It's... well, it's certainly not a cow. But that was discussed. Yeah, everybody gets an Animality. The kameo fighters do not, though.

Screen Rant: Considering the importance of Havik to the DLC's story, how it is all about Khaos and the "here-anything-is-possible" nature that was hinted at in the trailer for Noob Saibot, will we be seeing more Deadly Alliance and Deception-era characters like Hotaru and Drahmin in the story mode just kind of peppered throughout?

Ed Boon: I don't think you're going to see Drahmin and Hotaru. We've had conversations about including them as kameos possibly, but I wouldn't guess in this coming year you would see them.​

Screen Rant: Talking about all the different franchises that have been in Mortal Kombat over the years, not just in MK1 but going back, obviously there was Mortal Kombat Vs. DC, but it was really Mortal Kombat (2011) that really kicked it off with Freddy Krueger and Kratos. Since then we've had Leatherface all the way to now when we were just talking about Homelander. Are there any [characters] still left on a bucket list that you'd love to be able to play with, but you haven't been able to find a way to get access to yet?

Ed Boon: All the time. We've had a bunch, a bunch of discussions. Most of the time, the obstacle is the IP holder, whatever the circumstances are to whether they can license it out, whether they want to license it out. You know, all the obstacles that you have, the hoops you've got to jump through in order to make those things happen. Usually those are the things that hold us back.

Plus the fact that we have way more ideas than we have slots to fill, so to speak. But we're always having conversations about, you know, Street Fighter or some other game, like we were dipping into with Kratos and whatnot, but it's just like fun talk. Like if you and I sat down and said, "What would be cool to put into a Mortal Kombat game?" It's the same conversation.

Screen Rant: Still talking about characters, you've stated many times over the years that Scorpion is your favorite Mortal Kombat character. Is that still the case, even with this alternate reality that has seen, not so much the powers, but definitely the personalities, of all the characters shift over the years?

Ed Boon: My main reason that Scorpion is my favorite character, and probably always will be, is much more related to the origins of the first game, how we got it to happen, the development process. In my head, there's a very clear memory of when we did the Scorpion spear and getting that running.

And when we got it running, it was a big, like, "Oh, this is what this game is going to be. These are the kind of wacky, crazy things that are going to be in this game." And Scorpion was one of the earliest characters that we had done that really showcased that. The costumes, the backstory, the special moves and all that. Scorpion's story has kind of evolved over the years and in MK1 we're just rewriting it basically.

But he's still got the spear, the teleport, the pull-the-mask-off, all those things. It's just that [history], to me, is the main reason why he's my favorite character.

Screen Rant: I guess the last thing I want to ask is that, from talking about making the very, very first game, to MK3's "We only have 4-bit animations for an Animality," all the way to being able to deliver these really massive, really detailed, fleshed out worlds [in MK1]. What's the thing that you're most proud of with the Khaos Reigns DLC launch?

Ed Boon: That's a good question. I think the Khaos Reigns DLC launch is like the third or fourth time that we've done something like this, where we launch a game and then a year later we kind of relaunch it, add more characters, add more features, environments, just really layer onto it. And to me, it's a little bit more of a sign that players are continuing on with this ride with us. You know, we can have multiple releases of a game, just layering on features and whatnot.

And then also throughout the year we're releasing the characters and kameos and new features. But to me, I guess I'm most proud of the fact that it's still prominent in the video game industry. And it's this franchise that's just going to stay around long after I'm gone. I think they're going to continue making movies, I think they're going to continue making games and whatnot. And I think Khaos Reigns just kind of represents that.

As far as the features are concerned, to me, it's great that there's still an appetite for this in Mortal Kombat 1. New kameo fighters, new roster fighters, you know, the pop culture references are always fun too. Just seeing things that we're big fans of, the Scream movies, Terminator 2 is one of my favorite action movies of all time. Aliens is also, you know, we got Aliens in Mortal Kombat X, and so it's great to be part of that thing that we ire so much. And then we're part of the same conversation, part of that kind of thing.

Screen Rant: When you talk about how "They'll still make Mortal Kombat games after I'm done," do you have any other ideas for a non-Mortal Kombat project that NetherRealm could work on in the future?

Ed Boon: Oh, yeah. I've plenty of ideas. We also did a DC game called Injustice, and we made a sequel to that. And there've been other games that, you know, we just haven't been able to find the time.

One of the things about when a game continues to do well, there's an expectation of another one coming. And for us, it'd be a tough thing to sell to players, "Okay, we're going to do this game, and then an Injustice game or something. So, you're not going to see Mortal Kombat for 10 years," right? Like, I don't think that's going to be an acceptable scenario for our megafans.

Mortal Kombat 1: Khaos Reigns releases on September 24, 2023 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC, and Nintendo Switch.