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In Mortal Kombat, the player receives information concerning the backstories of the characters and their relationships with one another mainly in biographies that are displayed when the start button is not pressed, during attract mode in the title screen. These bios featured short videos of the characters taking their fighting stances and text informing the motives for each character to enter the tournament. The game takes place in a fantasy setting, with most of the game's events occurring on the fictional realms of the Mortal Kombat series. The original game is notably the only title in the series that features only one realm, that being Earthrealm. The tournament featured in the story actually takes place fully at Shang Tsung's Island, located somewhere on Earth, with seven of its locations serving as Kombat Zones.

To fully understand the plot of Mortal Kombat, the player must beat Arcade mode to unlock endings for each character, but only a few endings or a part of them are considered canonical to the Mortal Kombat storyline. Some endings even contradict one another. What really happened to the characters was only revealed on the sequel Mortal Kombat II.

[edit] StoryThe original Mortal Kombat is the only game in the series to not have an introduction video explaining its plot. Eventually, the story of the Mortal Kombat universe was revealed, as well as the story behind the tournament itself. It is said that the Elder Gods created various realms, and that they decreeded that the denizens of one realm could only conquer another realm by defeating the defending realm's greatest warriors in ten consecutive Mortal Kombat tournaments. With one of such realms, Outworld, already having won nine tournaments in a row, Earth's warriors would have to avoid handing Earthrealm the tenth loss, or all of humanity would crumble into the darkness of the Outworld. The first game takes place during this decisive battle. With the help of the Thunder God Raiden, the Earthrealm warriors are victorious and the monk Liu Kang becomes the new champion of Mortal Kombat after defeating the evil sorcerer Shang Tsung.[5]

The storyline of the first Mortal Kombat was later adapted into Paul W. S. Anderson's Mortal Kombat motion picture, and also in an animated prequel to the first movie titled Mortal Kombat: The Journey Begins, released straight to home video. In 2010, director Kevin Tancharoen released an eight-minute unofficial film called Mortal Kombat: Rebirth, featuring a more realistic and darker tone.[6] An alternate climax for the first game would be featured on the adventure game Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, which tells an alternate version of the events between the first and second Mortal Kombat tournaments.

[edit] Characters
Mortal Kombat character selection screen, showing Kano and Sub-ZeroThe original Mortal Kombat included seven playable characters, all of which would eventually become the series trademark characters and be included in later sequels at some point. The game was developed with digitized sprites based on actors, as opposed to animated cartoon graphics.[7][8] The protagonist of the game is the Shaolin monk Liu Kang, played by Ho Sung Pak, who enters the tournament to defeat Shang Tsung, the main antagonist and final boss who curiously is also played by Sung Pak. Despite his old age, Shang Tsung moves with incredible speed and summons skull fireballs at will, and can also steal the souls of fallen adversaries and morph into any character of the game, assuming their appearance and their special moves. Upon defeat, all the warriors' souls leave his body.

Elizabeth Malecki played the Special Forces agent Sonya Blade, who is pursuing the Black Dragon mercenary Kano, played by Richard Divizio. Carlos Pesina played Raiden, the God of Thunder and protector of Earthrealm, while his brother Daniel Pesina played Hollywood movie star Johnny Cage and the ninja specter Scorpion. The yellow color of Scorpion's Ninja outfit was changed to blue in order to create the Lin Kuei warrior Sub-Zero and to green for Shang Tsung's servant Reptile,[9] both also played by Daniel Pesina. Mortal Kombat would become famous for these palette swaps, and later games would continue with this tradition.

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