Trivia / Mortal Kombat 4

• Creator Backlash: Around the release of Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, Ed Boon admitted that making Shinnok the Final Boss of 4 was a mistake, seeing that previous bosses were much bigger enemies who Shinnok simply couldn't toe-to-toe with.
• Development Gag: Liu Kang can turn into a dragon which resembles the logo of the series.
• Dummied Out:
  • Some old characters were replaced by new ones at the last moment. This explains why these characters have similar moves/fatalities:
    • Kitana in favor of Tanya, though she does return in Gold. She is also playable in the Nintendo 64 port through Game Shark means, but has a limited move set and can freeze the game at certain points.
    • Noob Saibot in favor of Reiko, although he's still playable via a code.
    • Kano in favor of Jarek. This particularly noticeable since Jarek's second fatality is him shooting eye beams when he doesn't have a robotic eye like Kano does.
  • There was a stage called Skull.
  • In Gold, via Kombat Kode, it's possible to play in the Stage Selection arena, which is called "Ladder?".
  • Shinnok was set to be playable in the Game Boy Color port, and with a Game Shark code is still accessible, with fully working movesets and all, though he has no single player ending.
    • Sektor was set to appear in the Game Boy Color port of 4 before he eventually did in Gold. Some unused sprites of his attacks are in the game code.
• Follow the Leader: Despite being the fourth main entry in the series, this game's graphics being inspired by Street Fighter EX and many other 3D fighting games at the time.
• Refitted for Sequel: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Early footage of the game from the Mortal Kombat 4 Road Tour (a large promotional tour by Midway to promote the game prior to its arcade/console releases) showed that Noob Saibot was intended as a playable character right from the get-go, rather than only being an unlockable character in console ports.
  • A new character named Belokk was supposed to appear in Gold, but was scrapped due to time constraints. However, six screenshots of him were leaked.

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