Over the years, Mortal Kombat has introduced a ton of warriors. From attempts at new protagonists to characters fleshing out the lore from the classic trilogy, the games that came after Mortal Kombat 4 tried to evolve past the main cast and go in a completely new direction. This came to an ultimate culmination in Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, which brought back just about every playable fighter in series history. Since then, the series has reset its timeline back to the original trilogy, leaving the fate of many characters from Mortal Kombat's middle chapters up to the comics or other supplemental material.
The newer Mortal Kombat games have impressed with their best-of-genre storytelling, but that originally started with Mortal Kombat: Deception. That game introduced Konquest mode, a fully open fighting game RPG that featured every character imaginable from previous Mortal Kombat games and quite a few new ones. While future games would simplify and improve the campaign mode considerably, the story of Shujinko set a precedent that few other fighting franchises have matched. Unfortunately, players didn't latch onto him, and the same is true of many other characters from his era.
This was part of the driving before behind Mortal Kombat: Armageddon. In the storyline, the realms felt that there were too many warriors with too much power between them. This is basically a metacommentary on how many fighters Mortal Kombat introduced during the PlayStation 2 days. Every character was playable in Armageddon, taking the series to its breaking point and messing with some staple mechanics like character-specific fatalities. The game is both a celebration of Mortal Kombat's vast history and a chance to hit the reset button, and that strategy has worked wonders for them in recent times.
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Since Armageddon, there has been a trilogy of new Mortal Kombat games weaving a new series of events. Characters make different decisions, new characters pop up along the way, and the next generation of fighters take the spotlight. The new Mortal Kombat trilogy managed to tell a similar yet different kind of narrative across three games, but that obviously meant that some characters had to hit the chopping block. Although many have appeared outside of the games in official stories, here are the kombatants who were last seen battling Blaze atop an Aztec pyramid in Armageddon (or just died in Mortal Kombat 2011 and never became playable again).
- Blaze
- Kintaro
- Motaro
- Stryker
- Chameleon
- Khameleon
- Jarek
- Kai
- Meat
- Reiko
- Drahmin
- Hsu Hao
- Li Mei
- Mavado
- Mokap
- Moloch
- Nitara
- Onaga
- Sareena
- Ashrah
- Dairou
- Darrius
- Havik
- Hotaru
- Kira
- Kobra
- Shujinko
- Daegon
- Taven
Mortal Kombat has continued its reign as one of the most popular gaming franchises around. The modern trilogy served its purpose of bringing in more fans and expanding the fanbase, but they also leave the franchise in a place where anything is possible in the future. It's not known whether the developers at NetherRealm Studios have another Injustice in the works or something brand new, but it's clear that they're starting anew whenever they do return to Earthrealm for more bloody fatalities and thunder god action.