Mortal Kombat has no shortage of supernaturally-powered beings that dwarf the abilities of the average human. Despite that, the games don't always make clear the exact levels of power they present to the player, even though NetherRealm Studio's writers seem to have it worked out. When the average everyday beat cop like Stryker goes toe-to-toe with mystical beefcakes like Shao Khan, Emperor of Outworld, it can give players a muddled sense of how power levels work in the Mortal Kombat universe. Things get even more confusing when actual gods like Fujin and Shinnok get thrown into the mix.
Technically speaking, Shinnok is one of the highest-ranking gods of all time, but he still often gets beaten down by lesser gods and even mortals like Johnny Cage. Obviously, it seems as though one's divine status does not immediately equate to combat prowess (contrary to one's assumptions). But it also appears that there's a reason for this minor quirk in the Mortal Kombat series' logic. Not only does it explain all the non-canon matches that happen when one player picks a human and another picks a deity, but it lets NetherRealm build up the Mortal Kombat lore and involve more characters in the stories of their games. After all, there is actually a set hierarchy of gods that the games don't always flesh out.
NetherRealm's Story & Voiceover Director, Dominic Cianciolo, outlined this hierarchy briefly in an interview with Ars Technica on YouTube. As with many real-world mythologies, the hierarchy begins with a singular god, known as the One Being. Before Mortal Kombat's various realms, along with the various creatures that inhabit them, existed, there was only the One Being and the Elder Gods. In a classic "Cronos devours his children" gambit, the One Being fed off of the powers of the Elder Gods, a process which would have resulted in their deaths had they not constructed the various Kamidogu daggers and divided the One Being's essence among them. This divine fatality also happened to create the realms which compose the MK universe.
Which Mortal Kombat God Is The Most Powerful?
To break it down simply, at the top of the godly pyramid sits the One Being, who predates all events in the MK timeline and composes all of existence. Below them are the Elder Gods, who govern the affairs of the inhabitants of the nine realms. However, it seems as though Cianciolo skipped a level of the hierarchy in his tale, as Titans such as Kronika are canonically ranked higher than the Elder Gods. Kronika herself even created Shinnok and Cetrion. Nothing in the Mortal Kombat games fleshes out this incongruity, but it may just be safe to assume that the Titans also existed in this era before the One Being was chopped up into a collection of fighting game stages.
Sitting at the bottom of this pantheon are the familiar faces like Raiden. They are presumably the lowest of the low when it comes to fully-divine entities, and to express this, NetherRealm started referring to them as demigods in MK11. However, this is strictly to denote hierarchy. It has nothing to do with them being half-god and half-human, as the tradition use of the would would convey.
Another key aspect of the MK pantheon to understand is that each level of the hierarchy comes with specific responsibilities. Obviously, the One Being is busy embodying all of existence at once, while Titans tend to embody the most abstract forces that exist in the universe. Kronika, for example, embodies time. Meanwhile, Elder Gods are about lesser qualities, such as life and death. Finally, the demigods always embody base natural forces, such as thunder or fire.
Essentially, the lower on the totem pole a god is, the more physical their powers become. This may be why lesser gods like Raiden tend to interact with mortals the most. Either way, this hierarchy, though its lore has some missing spaces, seems to flesh out the whole Mortal Kombat pantheon well enough. Hopefully later releases will give players more of a clue as to how gods like the Titans functions, but for now they'll have to wait.
Source: Ars Technica