[Bonus] On Mortal Kombat and high tier feats

There is no meme, let’s begin

Realm Merging

Let’s start at MK3’s opening

For centuries Earth has used Mortal Kombat to defend itself against the outworld’s emperor Shao Kahn. But, Khan becomes frustrated by failed attempts at taking earth through tournament battle. He enacts a plan which began 10,000 years ago

During this time Kahn had a queen. Her name was Sindel and her young death was unexpected. Kahn’s shadow priests, lead by Shang Tsung, make it so sindel’s spirit would someday be reborn: not on outworld but on the earth realm itself

This unholy act gives Shao Kahn the power to step through the dimensional gates and reclaim his queen. Thus enabling him to finally seize the Earth realm.

Upon breaching the portal into Earth, Shao Kahn slowly transforms the planet into a part of the Outworld itself

MK9 is more or less the same in terms of plot, only real difference is elaborating Sindel has a ward that stops Kahn from crossing. So from the outset of realm merging, we already know Realm Merging involves portals and dimensional gates. It’s directly called as such and is also referred to as one in Nightwolf and Stryker's bios, and Liu Kang and Sektor's Trilogy endings. Many MK3 endings refer to defeating Kahn and ending the merge as Earthrealm “returning to normal”.

Hell, merging realms is why the Elder Gods help Raiden in MK9, showing and it’s undone basically instantly when Kahn is defeated. So sure, it’s “transforming” the planet, but hardly in a way that isn’t instantly undone. It’s only something that happens while the portal to the realm is open. This is almost certainly what all the statements of “physical absorption” mean such as in MK9 when used in relation to realm merges.

Let's not just take my word about everything up until now. Lets see what one of the co-creators said about the realms and merging them on twitter

https://twitter.com/therealsaibot/status/1396158926182252551

I’ll just post the full thread:

The inception of #MortalKombat’s fiction began with creating a reason for fighters to kick the sh*t out of each other. (1/11)

Our characters could’ve been kicking the sh*t out of each other for all kinds of reasons, but we chose to structure our story around a tournament that decides the fate of the world.

Seems like an obvious choice, right? (2/11)

Think of all those stories that have involved a tournament where losing had literal apocalyptic consequences…

Not all that many?

MK had lots of surface level influences in its creation that any part-time lore ‘expert’ can point to.

This is not one of them (3/11)

Our choice to build MK’s universe around a world ending tournament triggered a series of questions. Our answers to those questions are what made MK’s fiction unique and what led us to the concept of a multi-realm universe... (4/11)

Why realms?

Because we wanted MK’s underlying themes to be steeped in esoteric mysticism and the eastern concept of furies and the consequences of unbalancing them was spiritual in nature. (5/11)

So, if there was an ‘other’ world w designs on our world, the idea was that ‘they’ would cross planes of existence to get here. Their ability to open that gateway was spiritual not physical.

Magic not science. (6/11)

In MK’s universe, we lived in a ‘realm’ not on a ‘planet’ and humanity’s ignorance of that reality exposed its immaturity as a spiritually enlightened civilization, which is why Raiden had to hand-hold us. (7/11)

MK’s invaders could’ve been cosmic... they could’ve come in spaceships from another planet somewhere in space. But, that’s a very different story w/ a very different vibe and that is a choice that we chose not to make. (8/11)

So, I always saw a realm as a spiritual reality as much as a physical place. Whether it’s Outworld or Netherrealm or Earth... they all exist on parallel planes. The physical manifestations being the world we know and can comprehend... (9/11)

But, it’s the spiritual manifestation that makes the chaotic convergence of the physical realms possible.

And, when physical realms merge realities merge because on parallel planes of existence... Earth is Outworld and Outworld is Earth. (10/11)

That merging includes our perception of planets and the infinite cosmos beyond...

Unbalancing the furies to cause the realms to merge is actually not just a throwaway thing in a twitter thread decades after the games got made and has been mentioned a few times in MK2. To be clear, Furies aren’t crazy important, they dropped them entirely from MK2 onwards. What is important is destroying dimensional gates to prevent invasion and weakening dimensional gates for invasion respectively further shows its crossing boundaries. Basically, realm merging is primarily an erosion of spiritual barriers. Point 10 from the thread also says that any physical merging is simply a byproduct of this.

Now, a long long time ago, there was once an argument that Realm Merging scaled to absolutely everyone due to one ending, but that kind of went by the wayside and was dropped as an argument, but it pokes some further glaring issues in the whole argument.

To set the stage:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE9r_p7tvgs

Basically, Nitara’s realm is merged, and she’s trying to unmerge it, simple. To do so, she breaks a special sphere since it’s explained that's what sustains the merging, specifically that it binds the two realms. Now, what seems to have gone under the radar is that while yes, it sustains the merge, this is also yet another instance of it being portals, its called a Portal Sphere in the Krypt and is directly quoted as “a physical manifestation” in the extras menu. On top of the obvious being nearly identical visually and Nitara being the only character where this orb is relevant.

As you can see from the ending, it only teleports you when it’s broken. Reptile’s ending also shows that the room is untouched afterwards with no real damage whatsoever. The Portal stage also has a similar looking, though unconfirmed object in it as well. There’s also a short side quest in Deception with the same sort of thing, but it doesn’t add anything particularly noteworthy. She says “fused together”, which still fits with a portal interpretation

Essentially, the only time realm merging has actually been used in what can be considered an offensive matter only BFRs someone with no collateral damage. (no, characters like Kahn have never used realm merging offensively if you’re wondering).

Summary: All of this to say that realm merging is more or less one massive BFR of a realm rather than anything else, with little in the way of collateral damage to either the target realm or surroundings if the magic gets destroyed. Physical merging seems to be more a byproduct than anything else and it has no applications mid-kombat

The Kamidogu

So every timeline is kind of its own thing for Kamidogu, so we’ll get all of them going.

Original Timeline:

So, the plot of Deception. Onaga tricks Shujinko into getting these macguffins called the Kamidogu, which he will then fuse into one and recreate all of reality and become all powerful, as shown in Onaga (not playable, but still unlockable), Li Mei and Tanya’s endings.

Now granted, the Kamidogu are much more conclusively able to amp the user. They are said to just be realm merging again, however it is quoted to put people on the level of Elder Gods. Creating the realms is specifically done by splitting the One Being's consciousness, reality being formed by its dreams, possibly implying mind hax of some sort.

Anyway, scale the Kamidogu as high as you darn well want. Basically nobody important scales

The end of Konquest says that every Kamidogu individually is only a fraction of the power needed to create the realms, and they need to fuse into the One Kamidogu before they get to their main potential. The game’s own opening has Raiden, Shang Tsung and Quan Chi all fail to damage Kamidogu amped Onaga whatsoever, with Raiden’s suicide blast “having little effect” as quoted by the intro.

The One Kamidogu, the thing that is actually required to scale to everything, is never made in the actual story mode, the above arcade endings showing even the Elder Gods and Onaga himself without the One Kamidogu are pretty easily defeated by it and don’t square up to its power. One Kamidogu is exclusively in Arcade endings, since Onaga gets beaten by Shujinko before he’s successful. Despite Shujinko having a good chunk of the roster’s power, he still had to destroy all the Kamidogu, which he quotes directly as the source of his invulnerability. To be clear, this isn’t required to beat him in the actual fight, but we know the ending is canon as it’s referenced in some old website bios.

And no, Kamidogu don’t have any proven durability feats themselves, lesser characters destroying them despite not being able to harm Kamidogu amped characters should make that obvious. Mileage will vary on how accurate this is to canon, but in the actual fight against Onaga they’re oddly easy to destroy.

Quan Chi’s ending in Armageddon also has him gaining Blaze’s power and gaining an enormous increase in his power, before getting turned into a Kamidogu and thrown back in time. Blaze’s power increases are far from consistent, but it does still show that Kamidogu’s are far above most characters.

Second Timeline:

They’re wholly different objects, just daggers with powerful magic to seal Shinnok. They are quoted as having tasted One Being's blood, but its not known if this means from stabbing him directly or someway else even if its a fair call. Not that it matters much, it’d only really scale to likely the Elder Gods since they’re the only candidate for fighting him and nobody is shown to survive attacks from them directly. While they do amp characters' powers and physical strength, and the unamped characters can put up a fight, they’re overall nothing like the showings from the last timeline. Their best showing is Sub-Zero freezing a city, nothing cosmic at all

New Era:

Kamidogu made a return in Khaos Reigns where Havik plans to use them to remake his timeline and then move on to all timelines, laid out in this scene. The “all timelines” part of the deal is something that does need Geras’ time crystals to do, but it seems more to just use them to gain the range needed to do so more than anything else. Havik does gain a chest beam when you fight him and he does seem to be powered by them, so a better argument does exist than other timelines to scale. If you want to be a dick about it, we really don’t know what remaking reality entails. It’s possibly just reality warping though mileage is probably gonna vary for if that’s AP viable

Summary:

Original Timeline - Generally higher level characters like Raiden and Shujinko outright fail to harm Onaga while he doesn’t have Kamidogu at their maximum potential. Elder Gods (as in, all of them) are always stomped by max power Kamidogu in arcade endings and there are no methods of scaling elsewise

Second Timeline - Different objects entirely, no feats that place them on the level of the last timeline

New Era - Geras powering them seems to be based on range more than anything. Remaking reality is a bit ill defined, though overall there’s at least something

Blaze & Armageddon

Bit of a two parter here, lets start with Blaze first

Blaze:

One of the big things brought up is that a lot of feats are cosmic in nature when someone defeats Blaze and absorbs his power. Let's look at the main arguments:

Raiden - Destroys all realms besides Earth
Fujin - Creates a new realm

Minor side note: “Shattered realms” from Shao Kahn is pretty much always in reference to invasion. No realm before or since, even the merged ones, has shown it being destroyed outright

Sheeva - Laid waste to the realms with a Kamidogu. They need to be reformed, implying full destruction
Havik - Corrupted realm stability off his aura
Smoke - Exponential multiplication of his nanobots allowing him to overtake Edenia
Blaze, but we’ll cover that in a moment

Now, the feats endings are quite direct, the issue arises when you actually look at what happens in them. More specifically, the power increases and scaling from them

Raiden - His power is beyond other gods, direct quote. Elder Gods are up in the air, but otherwise not scalable to anyone and he has no fights
Fujin - Exponential power increase, non-starter for scaling and this is the only one that has both a cosmic feat and a direct number increase. No fights whatsoever
Sheeva - No mention of any fights, not scalable
Smoke - Fights nobody, not scalable
Havik is the only one you can maybe argue, but this is solely due to how we don’t know of any direct number increase. Nobody fights him at this point regardless

Blaze’s power gives inconsistent amps ranging from ten times in Shao Kahn's ending, 1,000 times in Kobra's ending, and exponential in Fujin’s. The ten and 1,000x don’t have any noteworthy feats and the exponential increase is a non-starter by default.

Summary: Blaze amps have no concrete value to attribute as his own power. Every ending that is arguable as cosmic in nature are quoted as far above any other relevant character and/or have no scaling chains

Armageddon:

The Blaze ending in Armageddon that people talk about for cosmic scaling quotes he was “unstoppable” at that point and reality being shattered left nothing, implying nobody survived it which can be easily extrapolated to Blaze as well. You can also be a bit pedantic and say that there’s nothing that outright says he caused it, just that Armageddon started. The end.

Also, kombatants causing the realms to weaken was done as a result of what's quoted as "ages" of Mortal Kombat, and it's quoted in game and in a website Bio that they’re tapping into forces that make reality possible. It's not stated exactly what this is, but we do know that One Being is responsible for making reality possible, so it may be his power. Regardless, attribute it to whatever you will, it's not standard for anyone and it’s a huge collective feat

Minor note as well, you can also use this to argue the roster during the Battle of Armageddon are way stronger than normal as well, which could be used as further proof against the above Blaze scaling

Also the minor problem that the game’s entire plot is like

Ya know

Trying to stop Armageddon from happening lmao makes no sense if they can just survive it

Summary: Why don’t the kombatants just tank Armageddon since they already scale to it? Are they stupid?

(also a collective effort from all characters while tapping into outside forces, done across ages. Blaze causing Armageddon is also weird, pedantic arguments exist against, and not scalable regardless)

Shao Kahn vs all the Elder Gods

Alright I’m gonna level with everyone out the gate this is probably gonna be the weakest section, I’m trying my best here damn it

So timeline 2 starts because Raiden was a sore loser at the end of Armageddon when Shao Kahn got retconned into beating Blaze, the entire plot of 9 happens and the Elder Gods show up to deal with him. Shao Kahn literally laughs off a beam from them while amping Raiden, they wreck his shit, the end. This is extra wild because if you didn’t know, Elder Gods are dragons in their purest form, so Shao Kahn basically lol no’d 6 literal god tiers simultaneously.

…to say this is utterly mental powerscaling wise is a criminal understatement. While it is kind of implied he'd bring Armageddon if he succeeded (says this in Raiden's bio as well) and he repeats his whole speech from the beginning of the game it's just… we really have no idea how this is supposed to work. His soulnado amp from earlier in the game is gone so it can’t be that, there’s no logistical reason he should randomly get Blaze powers from nowhere, and Elder Gods never stepped in any game prior to this such as impending Armageddon, the Kamidogu getting merged, even in MK3’s events (the obvious meta reason exists since 3 was made long before any of this happened, but still), and it makes no sense why merging Earth is suddenly the cause of Armageddon.

The fight before this is Raiden vs Liu Kang, Raiden gets pretty handily ragdolled by Kahn before the Elder Gods bail him out even though Liu Kang had no trouble doughnutting him earlier. It’s obviously a bit silly to say Raiden scales to Raiden (amped), and this includes Shao Kahn as well. Onaga needs Kamidogu to get to the level of Elder Gods and we already went over how Raiden fares against him.

MK11 further compounds this, since Nightwolf, Fujin, and Shang Tsung don't think they can take on Cetrion and decide to enlist Sindel. Now, to be clear, the assembled group do end up beating her, but it's not portrayed as an easy fight. And to remind everyone, she is weakened due to the timeline merges.

In all, its just a really jarring feat that does not line up with established power levels

Summary: Khan is potentially under an amp, but it’s not made clear. Regardless, its just kinda plot stupidity, leads to a lot of circular scaling and an enormous outlier

The Hourglass resetting the universe

This one is actually relatively simple. It’s done by time manipulation, constantly called restarting history (Jax even differentiates from destroying it), even into MK1, and creating Kronika’s New Era is shown to just be reversing time at the end of the base game. Manipulating fate also seems to be a part of it as well, likely stemming from time manipulation.

Shang Tsung roaming infinite timelines

From his MK11 ending. Anyways, no implication he’s crossing all of it at once, infinite size =/= travelling it all instantly. There’s a decent argument to be made that MK universes are infinite in size and you wouldn’t give people speeds like that because they exist in such a large universe (same applies to that one Nitara Invasion feat)

Shang Tsung sustaining a timeline

This one is possible, defeating him in MK1 is stated to cause the timeline to fall apart since he’s no longer holding it together. It’s just that it's uh, still around after the fact lol so it's clearly not immediate. Even still, Titan Havik has a similar thing going on and it's implied he's joined with the timeline in a special way that would cause its destruction if he died. Neither really have anything implying its magic energy or whatever doing this and we know even by Kronika that her death doesn’t collapse the timeline, and the entirety of Liu Kang’s MK1 chapter is based around stopping his Hourglass from being destroyed, which would destroy the timeline and is mentioned as happening in a defeat quote. Basically, not much to suggest it’s viable as a sustaining feat off actual power

Invasions feats

(its like one sentence lol)

Pretty much all of them fall under “could be life wiping, killing everyone, etc. and not literally nuking the place”

Raiden nuking timelines with Jinseis

(base image hijacked from here)

Feat: https://youtu.be/zZJdz9BdFRU?si=PAn247PQYxJZpC6m

Raiden was going to use all Jinseis and combine their power to form a shield, but this would cause a blast that blows up all timelines. Pretty simple, it requires Jinsei’s of numerous, seemingly every Earthrealm, and there’s no implication anyone would survive. People only scale to a single Jinsei at best, so I imagine you can put together why one Jinsei wouldn’t scale to the Jinsei but way more of them. Not that we know how much the individual ones contribute anyways, MK is inconsistent with how merging things affects its power

Where does this leave us?

With all this said, I do think there are a few feats you can still consider viable

What should be viable:

Cetrion’s Fatality: The main doc talks about it a bit more but basically, even though Cetrion’s weakened in the main story with poor showings, it should still be fine for her at her max power given Elder Gods in their purest form are dragons instead of being giants. Ranges vary for numbers, recent calcs being in the low Yottaton ranges but otherwise in that general area

Liu Kang’s Black Hole: Likely only scalable to Titans and Keeper of Time Liu Kang since a number of intro dialogues imply events are after the main game, (Kitana referencing Liu Kang meeting her Titan variant, which only happens after he becomes Keeper of Time again, for instance) but otherwise should still be fine. Gets roughly 20 Yottatons TNT for GBE to about 1.8 FOE if you use mass/energy, though some are skeptical about the latter as a method

(Possibly) Liu Kang and Shang Tsung’s timeline split: MK1 reveals the fight at the end of Aftermath that the fight ripped apart time’s fabric and made all the present timelines. It’s said primarily to have ripped time's fabric, though right after it says that the timelines each represent a different outcome, so one could argue that it may be a huge time manipulation feat rather than AP since it’s making new possibilities on top of it not really being punching universes into existence or what have you. Still, if spawning new timelines from a fight floats your boat for cosmic scaling, this is probably the way to go. Would really only scale to Titans, NE Noob Saibot, possibly some of the other Khaos Reigns characters, and Kronika would downscale (didn’t cause the timeline split in either of her fights). Keeper of Time Liu Kang is far above all Elder Gods combined by his own claims and its a devil of a time trying to get them to scale to the rest of the cast already

(Possibly) The Kamidogu: Covered already, but first timeline Kamidogu can arguably scale back to the Elder Gods and those above them and the likes of Noob Saibot in the New Era fights Kamidogu amped Havik and can survive blasts from them. Method of doing their crazy feats are up in the air though, not covering it fully here since Kanan vs Kenshi doesn't hinge on it.

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