Mortal Kombat is a franchise over 30 years old and has spawned numerous movies, television shows, comics, and even a live tour. The secrets were among the more treasured aspects of the series, especially in the old-school days. Back in the day, there were so many bogus myths and rumors surrounding features in the game.
Some are hidden characters like Ermac in MK1 or Hornbuckle, and there was even a myth about a nude code. However, many secrets did turn out to be real. A lot of these have an interesting use to them or were something put in by the developers to speak their minds.
8 Genesis Blood Code
There was a lot of hype and anticipation for the home console launch of the original Mortal Kombat. An extensive marketing campaign called Mortal Monday was made along with an iconic TV commercial. The SNES port was famously censored due to Nintendo still being strict about their family-friendly policies, and the input lag didn't help things either.
There was one thing that pushed the Genesis version over the top, and that was the blood. It was technically still censored since you had to enter the blood code, ABACABB, but everyone at the time knew. The inclusion of blood alone made the Genesis version outsell all the other home ports by a wide margin.
7 Pong
Mortal Kombat 2 has plenty of secrets, but this one can show up when it's least expected. During two-player combat, if one person gets 250 wins in a row, the next fight will be decided in Pong. On the surface, it might not seem special if you don't know what often happened in arcades back in the 90s.
Back in the day, it was common for one expert player to just hog the cabinet all day, and if you tried to beat him so you could play, you would get destroyed. The Pong battle appearing after 250 straight wins, is used as a safety net so that the person who wants to play the game has a more reasonable chance of winning.
6 Cooking With Scorpion
Out of all the unlockables in Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, the Cooking With Scorpion video is the most entertaining. Unlocked in the krypt for 270 platinum koins, this video is a humorous display of Scorpion chopping stuff in the kitchen and even making a cake.
It's very funny seeing this incredibly aggressive and violent character do these acts. At the end of the video, his axe prop even snaps when striking the watermelon. This video is so remembered it even spawned a YouTube series of the same name by The Super Zeros, which has millions of views.
5 Reptile
The original Mortal Kombat had a lot of firsts in fighting games, including the introduction of juggling, but it also had the first real hidden character in the genre. Reptile wasn't even in the version 1.0 launch arcade cabinets of the game. He was only in updated versions after the developers wanted to add a secret character to increase playtime since Reptile would inevitably spawn rumors.
Reptile would come in on rare occasions and give hints on how to fight him. On the pit stage, when an object is flying across the moon, do a double flawless victory and your character's fatality. You'll then fight Reptile, and defeating him will yield you ten million points. It is disappointing in hindsight that the developers didn't even write Reptile on the health bar for him. It just says Scorpion.
4 Animality
Mortal Kombat 3 only introduced one new type of finisher, and on the surface, it might seem lame. Most of the animalities in Mortal Kombat 3 aren't great, but how you perform it is quite satisfying to do in multiplayer. To perform an animality, you must first do a mercy.
A mercy must be done in the third round, and the winner has to back up all the way, hold run, press down three times and release run. This will allow the opponent to come back with just a tiny box of health left. After defeating the opponent again is when you can perform the animality. This whole process is very fun to do in multiplayer, giving your opponent hope that they can still win but crushing that soon after.
3 Babalities And Friendships
A ton of controversy erupted due to the first Mortal Kombat game over its violence. The folks at Midway then added these two new finishers in Mortal Kombat 2 to mock it. By winning the final round using only kick moves, you could perform a babality or friendship. These two new finishers added a lot of good humor to the game.
It's funny knowing that kids potentially used these to try to trick their parents into thinking the game wasn't that violent. Babalities returned in Mortal Kombat 9, while friendships returned in MK11. Doing these finishers, especially babalities, are the ultimate form of disrespect in online multiplayer. SonicFox once did this in the grand finals at EVO, and you could feel the salt.
2 EJB Menu
The original arcade trilogy of MK games had one secret left undiscovered for over 20 years. In all three games, by doing a fast button combination with both players' controls, you can access the EJB menu. The EJB menu allows you to view character endings, manually enter new initials on the high score list, and do various operations related to the cabinet itself.
The most damaging use of this menu, though, is that you can manually enable free-play mode. Imagine if this menu was discovered back in the 90s. Midway would have lost tons of money. Retro arcades still exist, so if you come across an MK2 cabinet, don't be surprised if you end up getting kicked out due to enabling free-play mode.
1 Fatalities
While the Mortal Kombat franchise today is most known for its violence and finishing moves, the original use of fatalities was something the people at Midway thought you would never find. The concept of fatalities was born from the dizzy system in Street Fighter 2. After beating your opponent so badly, you can freely beat them more. This felt great when you were the one doing the beating, while being on the receiving end felt terrible.
This mechanic was so disliked that tournaments across the world at the time didn't allow you to take advantage of the dizzy system. The MK developers moved the dizzy period after the fight was already over, so only the winner got that awesome feeling. Fatalities were discovered and have been an iconic and defining aspect of the series.