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Mortal Kombat is celebrating its 30-year anniversary today, October 8, 2022. For a series known for its gruesome fatalities, we take a look back at the ten best and worst ones in series history.

Everyone remembers that first time they saw it. The screen goes dim, the music sting hits, and something terrible and cool happens to one’s opponent. While Mortal Kombat would’ve been impressive in 1992 just from the sheer contrast of real actors fighting it out on screen compared to Street Fighter II’s colorful cartoons, the blood is what got really got people talking. The pints spilled during your average match were once thing, but that was nothing compared to the gallons at the end. The Fatality has always been Mortal Kombat’s calling card–the cherry on top, the chaser. It’s the brutal, bloody release that has added insult to injury to many a match for 30 years, and it’s a trip to remember the days when Johnny Cage casually punching a head off a body or Kano ripping out a heart were the the stuff of nightmares, while seeing people disemboweled, ripped to shreds, and melted into puddles of viscous goo are some of the most milquetoast finishers available to players in the 21st century.

As one might expect, it is certainly not easy to come up with new ways to shock players moving in for the big fat kill for 30 years, but it’s certainly possible. It’s also very possible, especially now that we seemingly have seen everything, to fail. Let’s face it: they haven’t all been flawless victories. And so, choose your destiny, dear reader, as we take you through the portal of time to look at the 10 best and 10 worst Fatalities from 30 years of Mortal Kombat.

BEST: Mortal Kombat (1992), Sub-Zero, “Spine Rip”

The best of the original seven, accept absolutely no substitutes. Like many of the best fatalities, Sub-Zero yanking his opponent’s spine right out of their body like he’s pulling a fresh carrot out of his garden is a total package of suddenness, brutality, absurdity, and spite. It’s a fatality you laugh at just as much as you shudder at, and even when the series went back to the chiropractic well to update this gem, there’s something about the simplicity of the OG that makes it evergreen.

WORST: Mortal Kombat/Mortal Kombat II: Liu Kang, “Cartwheel Uppercut “

With the debut of Mortal Kombat came not just the first time of being shocked by a Fatality, but also the first time a Fatality was a total let down. In a game where hearts can be ripped out, heads explode from electricity, and mortal men and women can be flash-fried in an instant, Liu Kang uppercutting an enemy into the stratosphere feels as impressive as a bowl of warm milk.

BEST: Mortal Kombat II: Kung Lao, “Hat Split”

Everything about MK2 took things to the next level, but in terms of sheer shock value, there were plenty of decapitations, explosions, and the like, but Kung Lao using his trademark razor hat to split his opponents right down the middle, and giving us a nice look at both sides of their entrails spilling to the floor, was jaw-dropping on a whole different level.

WORST: Ultimate MK3: Jade, “Shaky Staff”

In retrospect, knowing how motion-captured games are made, the fact that Ultimate MK3/MK Trilogy/etc. were so rife with cheap, filler Fatalities makes sense. But that forgiveness has limits, and we’re still not even sure what the hell is even supposed to be happening when Jade shakes her impaled opponent so fast they explode. It’s an embarrassing way to die more than anything else.

BEST: Mortal Kombat II: Shang Tsung, “Kintaro”

On the flipside from the gruesome elegance of Kung Lao’s Fatality is the stunning, hilarious brutality of Shang Tsung morphing into Shao Kahn’s four-armed second-in-command and punching his enemy so hard that the top half of their body flies across the screen. The Fatality itself is shocking enough, but the kicker is when you find out how it’s done–the winner had to pull off a victory while never taking their finger off Low Punch. Not only did the loser lose, not only did they die screaming, but they were secretly stunted on. That is just a perfect umami of failure.

WORST: Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3: Classic Sub-Zero, “Blackout”

Depending on who you ask, either Midway ran out of money to finish animating an update to Sub-Zero’s classic Spine Rip, or the self-censorship was a cheap shot at the ESRB. No matter what the story is, though, cutting away at Sub-Zero’s moment of glory just feels like a waste of everyone’s time and resources.

BEST: Mortal Kombat 4: Quan Chi, “Shake A Leg”

The MK series’ first foray into 3D hasn’t aged particularly well—-parts were just legendarily badeven back in 1997—-but it’s a game that certainly has its bright spots, and the game’s one true moment of intentionally hilarious glory comes in the form of the pale wizard Quan Chi finishing off matches by ripping off his opponent’s leg like a Thanksgiving turkey, and beating them with it forever. It gets more hilarious the longer it goes on, and somehow, the announcer has to announce that Quan Chi won, seemingly with a straight face.

WORST: Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance: Quan Chi, “Neck Stretch”

Remember that good old Team Fortress 2 “Nope” meme with the Engineer’s neck stretching with the slide whistle sound effect? Now imagine that, five years too early, a pale wizard straight out of a Dimmu Borgir concert doing the stretching while crouched on someone’s shoulders like a spider monkey, and played with all the seriousness of a heart attack. That’s Quan Chi’s Deadly Alliance finisher.

BEST: Mortal Kombat: Deception: Sub-Zero, “The Pitch”

Even as Fatalities started to get more complex, sometimes, going back to basics with just a little extra oomph was enough to make a Fatality special. In this case, Sub-Zero had been freezing then shattering his enemies for years by the time MK Deception released, and ripping off his opponent’s head and chucking the head back at them to perform the shatter would’ve been a nice bit of extra spice on its own. But there’s just something about the toss here, just that little bit of extra stank on that pitch that makes the shatter in Deception one for the ages.

WORST: Mortal Kombat Deception: Scorpion, “Only A Flesh Wound”

They had us in the first half, not gonna lie. Scorpion’s Fatality in Deception starts pretty strong, using his spear to rip off an arm and a leg. But the brutality gives way to hilarity every crucial second it takes Scorpion to stroll on over to his hopping victim, and snap their neck. If there’s ever a time to not shiver with antici….pation, it’s during a Fatality.

BEST: Mortal Kombat (2011): Scorpion, “Nether Gate”

If there were any single thing NetherRealm could’ve shown off from MK9 to demonstrate they meant business again, it’s this. Most of MK9’s fatalities had the new vicious undercurrent that’s carried them into present day, but even though it’s lighter on the red stuff than many of the others, there’s a particular Hellraiser-y quality to this one. You’re forced to just imagine how the poor enemy was skinned alive after being speared then kicked through a portal, how long they were in Hell, and the long drop and sudden stop to finish them off. That’s almost worse than if we saw it.

WORST: Mortal Kombat Deception: Ashrah, “Voodoo Doll”

For starters, a voodoo doll is one of those things that makes you think, “Well if you had that, why the hell didn’t you use it the entire match?” But even putting that aside, when Ashrah does say hello to her little friend, the most we get out of it is a couple of stabs, and a collapse. No disrespect to her hapless victim who is probably going through a bad time, but for us, the player, it’s a complete snooze of a Fatality.

BEST: Mortal Kombat X: Ermac, “Inner Workings”

It’s so very quaint to look back on the first two Mortal Kombat games and think about how this level of violence was once considered shocking enough to get a congressional hearing. To hear parents and politicians of the day tell it, they were the most shocking, gory, and disgusting video games ever made (meanwhile, Splatterhouse 1 and 2 say, “what up”). It’s especially quaint after seeing Ermac twist his opponent’s body in such a way he can telepathically slide out his opponent’s entire digestive tract, which might ACTUALLY be the most shocking, gory, and disgusting act of surreal horror to ever happen in a video game, let alone the Mortal Kombat series as a whole.

WORST: Mortal Kombat Armageddon: Ultimate Fatalities

On paper, creating your own Fatality sounds like an awesome idea. It would’ve been one thing for Mortal Kombat Armageddon to allow you to design Fatalities like how WWE games allow you to create a wrestler using a collection of available moves and animations. What we got, however, was a weird delayed fatal combo of sorts, when no one single blow was allowed to just mutilate and end an opponent in any meaningful way, and instead just ended up being a “stop, stop, he’s already dead” scenario where it was all too easy to get bored and just give up on the appropriate button presses altogether. Armageddon’s Fatalities were altogether uninspired and generic, and even worse if you were one of the unfortunate souls who had to do this madness using a Wii Remote and Nunchuck.

BEST: Mortal Kombat X: Cassie Cage, “Selfie”

Ed Boon has described the modern formula for Fatalities as telling a three-act story in 30 seconds. But there’s something to be said for simplicity and absurdity. Aside from the gruesome detail of the bloody stump left behind, there’s nothing particularly special about Cassie Cage giving her enemies one last whack to the face with a baton. Taking a selfie for the ‘gram with the corpse, however–with a fully functioning comments section no less–is absolutely priceless.

WORST: Mortal Kombat vs. DC: Kano, “Stomp, Drop, and Roll”

People knew immediately upon hearing the title Mortal Kombat vs. DC that there was no way DC would allow a scenario where Sub-Zero rips out Superman’s spine, but the Injustice games have since shown us since there are definitely ways to pull off cool T-rated finishing moves. You wouldn’t know that back in 2009, however, when the best they could come up with for hardened killer Kano was to have him roll in, bounce on his opponent’s torso, and roll away. That’s a lack of creativity we hadn’t seen from MK since the dark days of Mortal Kombat 1 on SNES.

BEST: Mortal Kombat 11: Shang Tsung, “Kondemned to the Damned”

Post-MK2, Shang Tsung never did have a truly memorable Fatality to speak of–and, no, we’re not counting that time NetherRealm gave him The Joker’s MK vs DC Finisher. There’s only so many ways you can see him swallow a soul before it gets played out. MK11 is the game that finally ups the ante for the old sorcerer, not just by getting Cary Hiroyuki-Tagawa to reprise his role from the still-awesome 1995 film, but leaning in on the whole demon-sorcerer thing by letting two revenants have their gruesome, fiendish way with his opponent before ripping out their skeleton. This one starts extreme, and ends on a jaw-dropping final note.

WORST: Mortal Kombat 11: Cassie Cage, “I

Although Mortal Kombat is certainly not above having a sense of humor with its brutal violence, there is such a thing as being too cute for your own good. Cassie Shadow Kicking her opponent’s heart out and making a heart react in the hole falls just on the outskirts of effectiveness. It’s a lot of effort put into a joke that simply doesn’t land. It’s okay, Cass; they can’t all be winners.

BEST: Mortal Kombat 11: D’Vorah, “New Species”

It can be hard to come up with unique ways to take out another living being that aren’t just variations on a few common themes, which makes the terrifying full-body horror of D’Vorah’s Fatality just unforgettable, even in a game as packed with unique ways to die as MK11. A human-sized insect woman vomiting pounds of her insect spawn into her victim, and watching as a new species of giant insect is born from the maggot-ridden torso is the stuff of pure nightmares, and yet, here it is, rendered in 4K, for our vengeful “pleasure.”

WORST: Mortal Kombat 11: Skarlet, “Heart Condition”

This one’s an example of how Mortal Kombat has to grade its violence on a curve. A blood-bending sorceress using magic tendrils to make someone’s heart explode in their chest would be a harsh way to die if it was in a movie. In Mortal Kombat 11, though, grading every Fatality on a scale, the next most basic finisher has Johnny Cage literally reshooting his famous head uppercut three times because it’s just not brutal enough. That’s whatmediocrelooks like in this game. Skarlet forcing her opponents to go out like a 56-year-old New York cabbie just doesn’t pass muster in this bunch.

Honorable Mention–Mortal Kombat vs. DC/Mortal Kombat (2011): The Joker/Shang Tsung, “The Killing Joke”

Stop us if you’ve heard this one: After Marvel had so much success with its own big crossover project, DC tries to do its own Versus project, and it’s a creative fiasco on every level. Of course, in the realm of games at least, it’s not all gloom and doom. Mortal Kombat vs. DC crawled so two great Injustice games could run. But also, even though it watered down so much of both MK and DC’s best traits, it gave us this very literal banger of a Fatality, where The Joker fires a fake pistol at his annoyed opponent in a fit of giggles before taking them out with a real deal. The series has goofed before, just letting players blow away opponents with guns, and this one is irksome for that same reason. However, the Clown Prince of Crime’s perfect comedy timing on this gag makes it an all-timer. Or, at least, it would be if NetherRealm weren’t forced to patch in a dramatic zoom to the Fatality to keep their T-rating in North America, and thus ruining the framing of the gag. They’d eventually offer players a consolation prize, giving the uncensored version to Shang Tsung in MK9, with an added head explosion for good measure, but it just wasn’t the same coming from the Juggalo Shang morphs into instead of The Joker. This one’s just plain got baggage. And as such, it’s the best AND worst of Mortal Kombat, all rolled into one.