Mortal Kombat 11: Five Guest Characters We Need To See

For those times when Super Smash Bros just doesn’t do enough to get those violent juices flowing, Mortal Kombat is the fighting game you’ll want to turn to. Unfortunately, unlike Super Smash Bros, Mortal Kombat has always typically been a little light on guest characters. 

This is something that’s started to change for the NetherRealm-developed fighter in recent years. Mortal Kombat X invited a number of horror heavyweights to the party, including the Xenomorph from Alien, Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th, and Predator from… I dunno, I forget the name of the movie.

Mortal Kombat 11 is keeping the guest characters flowing, with Spawn, Joker, and even the Terminator joining the fray as part of the game’s first DLC pack, but why stop there? NetherRealm should embrace Super Smash Bros levels of crossover madness, and throw as many guest characters into the game as they can manage. Here are five I’d love to see.

The Punisher

Everybody loves the Punisher, which weird, given that the majority of media he’s appeared in outside of the comic books has been kind of rubbish. Still, he was fantastic in the Netflix series (thanks for cancelling that, by the way), and people fondly remember the 2004 PS2 game.

Since we probably won’t be getting a new Punisher game anytime soon, why not introduce him to the world of Mortal Kombat? He’d be happy as clam at high tide, or as keen as a vicious antihero in a room full of criminals.

It’s incredibly unlikely that we’ll ever see a Marvel character show up in a Mortal Kombat game (what with all the decapitations and savage murders), but if any Marvel character was the right fit for the franchise, it’s be the Punisher (what with his love of decapitations and savage murders).

Other strong Marvel candidates for a role in Mortal Kombat include Wolverine, Carnage, Venom, Deadpool, Ghost Rider, and Blade.

Pennywise

The majority of guest characters introduced in Mortal Kombat so far haven’t exactly been good guys. For the most part we’ve only really seen a string of horror icons (Jason, Freddy Kreuger) and sadistic killers (Joker, Predator).

In that respect, Pennywise – the horrifying clown/demon from Stephen King’s IT – would be right at home in Mortal Kombat 11. It’d also mean we’d finally have a game that lets Joker and Pennywise go head to head, which would be all kinds of awesome.

Being an ancient cosmic entity, Pennywise has all kinds of gruesome tricks and powers up its sleeves that could make it a properly unique fighter. Or maybe it could just spent an entire match goading Scorpion into a complete psychological breakdown – the worst fatality of them all.

Geralt Of Rivia

I’m gonna level with you, there isn’t a game out there that I don’t think couldn’t be improved by the inclusion of The Witcher 3’s Geralt of Rivia. We’ve already seen him show up in Soul Calibur VI and Monster Hunter World in the last few years, and I’d put very good money on a Super Smash Bros appearance being on the cards sometime soon. Please let that be the case.

While Geralt’s cameos in the aforementioned games are great, they don’t really let the White Wolf really unleash the fury we know he’s capable of in his own titles. In The Witcher 3, for example, Geralt cuts bloody swathes through enemies. By the time he’s finished with a bandit camp, there are limbs and entrails everywhere.

It’s nasty stuff, but perfectly suited for a game like Mortal Kombat 11. Geralt has two swords for a very specific reason, and NetherRealm would allow him to put those weapons to use in all manner of gruesome ways. By the same token we’d also have to watch Geralt suffer the occasional decapitation and disembowelment, but it’s nothing he can’t handle.

Doomguy

Doomguy, who you’ll know from such hits as DOOM, DOOM II, and A Good Day To DOOM (I made that last one up) would be a worthy addition to Mortal Kombat. The scourge of the underworld uses a heady mix of ridiculously massive guns and his bare hands to rip, tear, and kill his way through hordes of demons. Just imagine what he’d do to Sub Zero.

The inclusion of Doomguy makes so much sense that fans have actually already lobbied for the character’s inclusion. In December last year, a petition to get the demon slayer into Mortal Kombat 11 picked up an incredible amount of steam, although unfortunately nothing ever came of it.

That doesn’t mean NetherRealm aren’t aware of the demand though, and for all we know they could be in talks with Bethesda right now to get Doomguy in the game and ripping off limbs in time for Christmas. Probably not though.

Carnage

I’ll be honest, I got so excited about the idea of Carnage in Mortal Kombat 11 after namedropping him while talking about Punisher that I felt I had to give him his own space in this article. This slot was originally gonna go to Santa Claus, in an attempt to be funny, but I realised it wasn’t that funny so basically, Santa Claus can do one.

Spider-Man villain and spawn of Venom, Carnage probably typifies 90’s comic books more than any other character, in that he’s incredibly, shockingly, needlessly violent. In other words, he’d be right at home in Mortal Kombat 11. 

Despite being hugely popular back in the day, Carnage has become one of Spider-Man’s most played out characters in recent years, mostly because the whole “unstoppable monster” thing stops being scary after Spidey goes ahead and stops him for like, the thirtieth time.

In Mortal Kombat though? Who cares about his history or baggage. Carnage would be right at home in a game about ripping people’s spines out, and the beloved villain would be able to cut loose in a manner that the Spider-Man comics or films would never allow.

At the end of the day, that’s what Mortal Kombat is all about, isn’t it? Characters cutting loose and treating players to buckets and buckets of lovely, squelchy gore.