Crazy to think Mortal Kombat has been around for over thirty years. Long enough now to have gone through multiple reboots and eras.
As followers of this blog would guess, I'm of the older generation. My time was the original timeline from the first Mortal Kombat of 1992 to 2006's Armageddon—nicknamed by some the "Midway Era." I effectively called it quits come Mortal Kombat 9 and later embraced Kitana's MKX ending as my canon ending to the story as a whole (see the fifth part of the Kitana Retrospective for more on that).
I do still peek at what's going on in the story and characters I care about, but I've accepted my time as an active Mortal Kombat fan passed long ago.
Younger and more recent fans might not realize, but once upon a time...before the reboots and retcons and rewrites...if I were to single out who the true protagonists or "main characters" of Mortal Kombat were, it would be these two:
Yes, Liu Kang was the hero who saved the day at the end, and there is definitely something to be said about Scorpion and even Reptile, among a handful of others.
But, in terms of fleshed out backstory, motivation, conflict and development—the things that actually make a compelling protagonist in a story—the two leads of the original generation were easily the younger Sub-Zero and Kitana.
An interesting thing when looking at their respective characters and how they progressed over the years is how much they parallel one another, which is what I want to look at with this blog post.
So let's compare and contrast Sub-Zero and Kitana and see how they align and differ....
To start, there's the obvious surface level that they're both blue ninja.
Their respective fighting abilities are also defined by an iconic gimmick: cryomancy for Sub-Zero, steel fans for Kitana.
But looking deeper at their backstories, you find both began as assassins before turning against their masters. Both are motivated by a desire to address evils of the past and ascend to a more honorable and noble standard. For Kuai Liang, it's making the Sub-Zero mantle his own and reforming the Lin Kuei into something better, while Kitana strives to restore Edenia and undo the horrors of Shao Kahn.
And, over the course of the games' story, they both grow into strong leaders and respected heroes.
Also...conveniently enough...although "Sub-Zero" debuted in the first Mortal Kombat, Kuai Liang's story began, like Kitana, in Mortal Kombat II.
Both are famous for intense rivalries with similar looking (palette swap) opponents in the form of Scorpion and Mileena:
Both rivalries are also the result of the manipulations of a villain who played them against each other: Shao Kahn for Kitana and Mileena, and Quan Chi for Sub-Zero and Scorpion.
The nature of these respective rivalries are quite different. Scorpion's true enmity was with Bi-Han rather than Kuai Liang, and he even vowed to protect the latter for a time. And once he discovered the truth about Quan Chi, Scorpion was able to make peace with him. To the younger Sub-Zero, Scorpion was little more than an obstacle and perhaps a reminder of where the life of a Lin Kuei can lead.
Mileena, on the other hand, seems incapable of accepting that Shao Kahn—not Kitana—is the source of her problems, and their rivalry is much more volatile and personal, given their relation. But like Kuai Liang and Scorpion, Mileena is more of an obstacle in Kitana's journey than end-all, be-all opponent.
On that subject...
Both Kitana and Kuai Liang have issues with their siblings:
There is also something of a parallel in that both Sub-Zero and Kitana have shown they at least want to believe their respective siblings can change for the better.
Kuai Liang apparently retains some fondness for his older brother, although for Kitana, Mileena's reformation seems tied more to her own internal struggle with redemption. Kitana was once an evil, cold-blooded person, and Mileena is effectively her dark side in physical form. So naturally, she has very conflicted feelings regarding her "sister."
One gets the impression that, although they would like their siblings to reform, both Sub-Zero and Kitana are very aware of how unlikely that might be.
Though, for all the troubles they have with their relatives, they both also have very close friends that were, at some point, sent to kill them:
Of course, while Kitana managed to convince Jade to join her against Shao Kahn, Sub-Zero had...let's say mixed success with poor Smoke in the original timeline. Even after helping him resist his cyborg programming, Sub-Zero still lost his friend to Shao Kahn's dungeon and later Noob Saibot's influence.
Which reminds me...
I would feel remiss not to acknowledge that both Sub-Zero and Kitana also got royally dumped on in Mortal Kombat 9:
Okay, I kid (not really), but we did see both of their journeys sabotaged via retcons and Raiden's time-travel fuckery. Kuai Liang is turned into a cyborg and unceremoniously killed. Kitana is reduced to a damsel in distress who exists just to get stuffed in the proverbial fridge. Both end up revenant slaves like most of the other heroes.
Not exactly either character's finest hour to say the least.
Anyway, in general, Sub-Zero and Kitana seem to share similar dispositions and personalities. Somewhat guarded, stoic, maybe melancholy. But not without compassion. They've both persevered and endured many tragedies and betrayals through their lives.
Perhaps befitting their blue theme, they both seem to be calm and cool-headed characters.
Of course, there are notable differences. Sub-Zero, for instance, has no parental figure of his own (that we know of anyway) like Sindel, nor does Kitana have a protege akin to Frost.
I suppose we didn't really need to feature Kuai Liang's father in the games. He was apparently a previous Sub-Zero and, based on what info we got on him, kind of a ruthless bastard.
Where Sindel is a more loving figure and plays into Kitana's arc vis-à-vis forgiveness and reconciliation, which also informs the theme of redemption and escaping an abusive past, a confrontation between Kuai Liang and his father would presumably play into his desire to escape the Lin Kuei's corruption and remake it and himself with a legacy of honor and pride—something that can achieved via his conflicts with Sektor and Bi-Han and even Scorpion.
As for a prospective protege, while Frost factored into Sub-Zero cementing his legacy (a failing effort seeing as she betrays him), Kitana probably has enough on her plate with restoring Edenia to seek out a particular person to take under her wing.
It might've been interesting though. Or perhaps—before she turned on Kahn—what if Skarlet had been her protege? I'm basing that more on Skarlet's MK11 backstory than the MK9 blood-golem origin, but what if Kitana had been a mentor to her back in the day? What if Kitana was partially responsible for making her the bloodthirsty killer she became?
Food for thought.
No significant parallels between Sektor & Cyrax and Tanya & Rain either, except for dubious loyalty.
Of the four of them, Cyrax is the only one who's shown to be a potentially worthy ally, so long as he gets free of his programming. Sektor, meanwhile, is a soulless machine that hates Sub-Zero (as much as a machine can hate anyone, I suppose).
Tanya has consistently proven she doesn't give a damn about anyone but herself. Rain teased there might be something almost redeemable about him during MK3, but since then, it's become clear he's ultimately an unreliable and untrustworthy prick.
Interestingly, their respective dynamics with Liu Kang and Sareena are an inverse of each other.
Liu encourages Kitana and gives her hope for victory, while Sub-Zero encourages Sareena and inspires her to be better.
Not necessarily related to Kitana or Sub-Zero, but I do think it's worth mentioning that both ships tend to get misconstrued by fans (and even the MK writers). No, Liu Kang was not the reason Kitana turned against Shao Kahn, nor was either Sub-Zero responsible for Sareena escaping Quan Chi.
But that's a whole other can of worms.
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I suppose the final thing to wonder is how Sub-Zero and Kitana see each other? Is/was there a relationship that hadn't been revealed or explored? Were they aware of the ways they reflected one another, and because of that, held some kind of special respect?
Who knows? It certainly would've been interesting to see them placed in a situation together and exploring how they responded, especially since their respective sub-plots never really overlapped in the games' overall story.
But that's up to the fan fic writers now.
No real point to all this, and I'm always reluctant to discuss this because people tend to assume I'm shipping them. I'm not. I hate shipping.
I just find it interesting is all.
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