When Mortal Kombat hit arcades back in 1992, it wasn’t just the buckets of pixelated blood that had kids spending every spare coin they could find. It was the shock of seeing something different. These were real human actors digitized into fighters. Released in the wake of Street Fighter II’s success, Midway’s contender leaned on proto-motion capture: actors performing martial arts moves in front of cameras, later transformed into on-screen avatars. If you’ve ever noticed that funny little rocking motion characters do while “idling,” that came straight from the actors themselves.
Today, 33 years later, one of those very actors, Daniel Pesina, has dropped a nugget of hidden Mortal Kombat history. Pesina, who not only played Johnny Cage but also wore the ninja masks for Scorpion, Sub-Zero, and Reptile, revealed on Facebook that a Liu Kang fatality was filmed but never made it into the first Mortal Kombat. Under his account, Master Pesina, he wrote: “Not every move made it into the game… here’s one of the Fatalities that was never used. If we had used it, what would you name this fatality?”
The clip shows Liu Kang pulling off a brutal move that looks like a butterfly kick. Fans immediately started playing the name game in the comments: suggestions ranged from “Tornado Kick” to “Hammerheel” to “Shaolin Headshot.” None of those names are canon, of course, but they fit right into Mortal Kombat’s tradition of turning simple martial arts into bone-crunching spectacles.
This isn’t the first time unseen footage from the original game have surfaced. Back in 2021, Mortal Kombat co-creator Ed Boon shared behind-the-scenes clips from Scorpion’s 1992 video capture session. They were grainy footage of martial artists working out the kinks of what would become some of the franchise’s most iconic moves. Boon explained how Scorpion’s legendary spear attack was born from a spur-of-the-moment idea: “We certainly did a ton of prep for our video shoots, but some ideas came to us while filming. With Scorpion’s spear, it started with ‘You know what would be a cool ass move?’ From there you can be a fly on the wall and see us working through the details.”
Boon also gave fans a peek into the technical headaches of making a game on early ’90s hardware. Every animation frame chewed up precious memory, which meant compromises. “We were so tight on memory, that we didn’t even capture any motions for the victim reactions,” he admitted. “Instead we borrowed from their existing animation frames. You can hear us talk about reusing one of the victim’s ‘knockdown’ animations when they initially get hit by the spear.”
This unearthed Mortal Kombat fatality reminds us that one of the greatest games of all time came about from just a group of creators, martial artists, and game developers experimenting, improvising, and making the most of what little tech they had. And while Liu Kang’s scrapped fatality may never be playable, it’s still awesome to see all these years later.
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