Highlights
- Reptile, the enigmatic green ninja from Mortal Kombat, makes a comeback in Mortal Kombat 1 with a fresh new backstory and a grisly fatality.
- The Banished Trailer for MK 1 features Reptile prominently, showcasing his shape-shifting abilities and his origin story as a victim of his own people.
- Mortal Kombat 1 raises the bar in terms of gory and disturbing finishing moves, and Reptile's fatality is a standout.
As a kid who often blew hundreds of hours and dollars at the local arcade, I’ll never forget the time I was witness to a player—much more advanced than myself—stumble upon the hidden fight against Reptile in the original Mortal Kombat in 1992. Like a paleontologist discovering a new species of dinosaur, I was over the moon. Imagine my extreme delight then when I heard that the series’ enigmatic green ninja would play a key role in the upcoming reboot, Mortal Kombat 1 (his first proper appearance in a proper Mortal Kombat game since Mortal Kombat X in 2015).
When the Official Banished Trailer for MK 1 dropped, I was completely floored. Not only would Reptile be featured front and center as the Saurian known as Syzoth, but NetherRealm Studios has provided this guy with a fresh new backstory (one of the good guys now?) and one of the more grisly fatalities we've seen so far in the upcoming game.
Narrowing down the iconic Mortal Kombat roster to one single favorite is akin to trying to pick your favorite junk food: they’re all colorful, unique and can kill you. For me though, it was always Reptile. Perhaps because I was a dinosaur nerd, something about his cold-blooded background immediately appealed to me, but it could’ve easily been that his clandestine appearance was synonymous with his fellow masked ninjas, Sub-Zero and Scorpion.
Whatever the reason, I kept up with this ninja and appreciated the changes that Midway provided along the way, such as making him a playable character in MK II, or the addition of speech in MK X. However, nothing, absolutely nothing, could’ve prepared me for his current trajectory in the most recent iteration of Mortal Kombat. Now we’ve finally got a shape-shifting Reptile seamlessly slipping between his human form and…that of an actual reptile.
Reptile is the focal point of the Banished Trailer, with his liberal amount of screen time serving as bookends. Within its 3:45 duration, we get a lot to chew on, literally. Turns out that our old buddy Reptile’s origin story is quite the tearjerker as he claims to have been terrorized by his own people, the Saurians, simply for being able to shape-shift into a human. I mean, you already feel sorry for the guy. A minute later, that feeling of sympathy quickly abates as its clear that Reptile’s not here for a pity party, but to seriously unleash the beast with a nasty finishing move.
Gory and upsetting fatalities are one of Mortal Kombat’s claims to fame, so much so that they helped prompt the creation of the ESRB rating system back in the 90s. And rightly so. The upcoming Mortal Kombat 1 seems to have raised the bar from even the Mortal Kombat 11’s troubling finishing moves by implementing a new round of creative and disturbing ways to off your opponent. That being said, Reptile’s is definitely one to watch out for.
It may sound a bit redundant to say that a warrior who’s half man-half dinosaur can eat you, but, man does he really eat you! Reptile’s jaw-dropping fatality consists of him tossing you high in the air, gobbling you up in a spray of blood, then regurgitating you up Anaconda-style covered in acid. Oh, due to the acidic goop dripping off of your body, your limbs just may fall off too.
Given the new role of my favorite green ninja in Mortal Kombat 1, contextually the gore was surpassed by a certain satisfaction. Almost like seeing your dark horse sports team finally make it to big leagues.You’ve arrived, Syzoth. Now just keep doing your dino thing.