Lotsa ppl asking about #MortalKombat tournament rules and rule breaking. Here’s an attempt to dispel confusion around this topic as it pertains to the first few games...

Now, pop a red pill and enter the rabbit hole... (thread) https://twitter.com/kinina_momlvy/status/1386367732099305475

During MK1 we didn’t specify a number of victories needed for a realm to “win.” We only inferred that one too many losses would unbalance Earth’s furies - negative and positive forces that keep realms from converging in chaos... (1/18)

The rules were simple... the expansion of an aggressor realm is dependent on that realm’s ability to unbalance the furies of a defending realm through a tournament challenge.

To end the threat, a defending realm would have to tip the scales in the opposite direction. (2/18)

This is why the events of MK1 were so critical because Earthrealm was at its tipping point. Goro had been cleaning house for so long that Earth could not withstand another tournament loss. (3/18)

When Liu Kang won the MK1 tournament he became the immortal champion, but his job was just beginning. Outworld was not defeated, it was merely held off until the next generation’s tournament... (1/18)

As story developed in MK2, we introduced Shao Kahn and his dying realm of Outworld. The realm was dying because Kahn had absorbed the life out of it. Drenched in power, he was suffocating within the confines of his own realm. (4/18)

Shao Kahn needed Earthrealm just as he needed Edenia before it. He was desperate to unbalance Earthrealm’s furies so that he could merge realms and save himself, but he was beholden to pesky rules set forth by all powerful Elder Gods. (5/18)

Losing the MK1 tournament meant that Kahn had to wait for the next tournaments to unbalance Earth’s furies, but he could not survive that long. What is a generation on Earth could be half a millenia on Outworld and he was drowning in his own power.

Shao Kahn was desperate (6/18)

...and... Shao Kahn was also an impatient power-hungry cheater looking for ways to subvert the rules set forth by the Elder Gods. His back pocket power play, in the case winning by the rules didn’t work out, was the resurrection of his dead Queen on Earth... (11/18)

To pull it off in part, he needed to lure Raiden (and his fighters) away from Earth. So, he had Shang slaughter Liu Kang’s Shaolin temple to tempt Liu into accepting a challenge on Outworld, which Liu did... unaware that his acceptance handed Kahn the keys to Earthrealm. (12/18)

Blame Liu. Blame Raiden. Doesn’t matter. The MK2 Outworld tournament was a diversion...

Nobody won the tournament (character endings don’t count).

The good guys lost.

The tournament was interrupted by the merging of realms which led to the events of MK3.

(13/18)

Queen Sindel was snuck into Earthrealm through a back door by way of the Netherrealm. Her presence on Earth was just enough for Kahn to get his foot in the doorway to unbalance the furies and merge the realms... (14/18)

Shao Kahn’s power play was all or nothing. He would either crush the insurgent threat posed by Earth’s surviving chosen warriors and use his expanded powers to stave off Elder God interference, or he would lose everything with the complete collapse of Outworld... (15/18)

This is where the good guys won.

There would not be another tournament between Earth and Outworld because there was no Outworld after Kahn’s MK3 defeat at the hands of Liu Kang and the betrayal/reawakening of Queen Sindel.

Shao Kahn bet everything and lost everything. (16/18)

The moral of the above story was that chaos ensued when the tournament rules were broken. Avoiding all of that realm merging chaos was the reason that the tournament was created in the first place.

And, the tournament rules were technically only broken once...

(17/18)

...All of the rule forsaking and related shenanigans surrounding the tournaments were really just Shao Kahn and Shang Tsung pushing the rule limits and Raiden smacking them on the hand when they went too far. (18/18)

Note 1 of 3: the above is specific to the early games.

Later games (post me) differed when adding detailed exposition, but did a great job of retaining the concepts.

Note 2 of 3: I believe the only place (or at least the first place) we referenced a 10 tournament rule in the early games, was a single line of dialog in the MK2 Collectors Edition Comic Book.

Note 3 of 3: That 10 tournament construct was later adopted by other media (films, etc) and even later in the games themselves. I guess it was easier to digest than the unbalancing of furies.

^^^ Apologies ... the above thread order is correct, but the parenthetical numbers are off so please ignore them.