That’s a good question... and a good excuse to dive into #Raiden’s journey through the early #MortalKombat games >-|-o}

More than any other character, Raiden developed over time and his inception isn’t as simple as you may think... (thread) https://twitter.com/aclancalledkeys/status/1379967199612260356

#MortalKombat can sometimes be dismissed as a pile-on of pre-existing influences and it was no doubt a love letter to our favorite things growing up. But, it’s creation was more complex than randomly pulling this or that from here or there... (1/13)

Before Ed and I began actual development, we went through a phase of loose ideas. This was before we had developed our character archetypes or even the beginning’s of our story premise... (2/13)

One thing I used to do to get my creative juices flowing was to wander the halls of Chicago’s Field Museum. Back in the early 90’s they had an installation of Asian antiquities with a section of artifacts specific to Japan... it was there that I discovered Raijin... (3/13)

My first intro to Raijin was as a worn down idol carved from stone in a dimly lit display case. I recall the placard also calling out ‘Thunder God’

At that moment, I think I may have been literally struck by lightning... We had to have a Japanese Thunder God in our game! (4/13)

Shortly after, I began reading up on Asian mythology. I ran into our thunder god again. This time he was called Raiden and was depicted as a mischievous drum carrying pot-bellied demon. Not the qualities I was hoping for, so we would have to take liberties in our portrayal(5/13)

Ed was all in on Raiden from the get-go, but we exchanged the pot-bellied demon for a lightning bolt throwing warrior. Similarities between our Raiden and his mythological source would survive in name and concept only... (6/13)

As I sketched and wrote stories and began to structure archetypes, I thought about Lightning from Big Trouble in Little China. I doodled a triangular hat on Raiden’s head in homage to BTLIC but also to help give him a distinctive silhouette compared to the other characters(7/13)

Raiden and BTILC’s Lightning have zero characterization in common. They are two totally different characters, but there would be no escaping surface level comparisons as long as we kept the hat... and we were okay with that. 

Here’s why... (8/13)

Archetypes helped inform how characters related to each other, but we needed every opportunity to convey story through visuals and if identifying a character as that guy from that other thing helped, then so be it. In hindsight, I’m not sure that connection helped w Raiden (9/13)

MK1’s Raiden was not fully developed as a character, but our thought was that as a literal god, players would relate to him as a higher power/authority than the other characters.

This is why there weren’t a bunch of mythological gods as characters in MK... (10/13)

Raiden was the ‘mentor’ and players needed to relate to him that way. But, we didn’t take advantage of that until we began exploring our expanded universe in MK2/MK3. At that time, Raiden’s role was solidified in our games and other media as Earth’s protector... (11/13)

So, to answer the specific question asked... I imagine that Raiden takes a mortal form when he interacts with other mortal characters... (12/13)

While he technically competed in the MK1 tournament, we walked that back in the later games as we further developed the story. Hopefully it was for the betterment of the character...

You Krazy Kids today would call that a retcon (13/13)