Mortal Kombat: Deception/Characters

Here, we're going to list the characters introduced in Mortal Kombat: Deception and Mortal Kombat Unchained.

Dairou

• Badass Long Hair
• Bald of Awesome: In the front with a ponytail in the back.
• Bling Bling Bang: His ending in Armageddon. Dairou is awarded with an invulnerable suit of armor than burns any who try to attack him. He uses this gift to defeat Shao Kahn, claim the throne to Outworld, and then propose a truce between Edenia and Earthrealm.
• Dead Little Sister: Or rather, his whole family.
• Eye Scream: One of his Fatalities involves him ripping out two of his foe's ribs and then gouging their eyes out with them.
• Facial Markings: On his forehead.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: On the side of his head.
• Ground Pound: Has a move where he falls backwards and slams himself into the ground hard enough to knock his opponent into the air.
• Morality Pet: His former guardsman Hotaru would seem to be this, as Dairou is hesitant to kill him. Subverted in that his Deception ending has him killing Hotaru anyway, but Dairou at least announces his intent to kill him beforehand.
• Wild Card: As a mercenary, he doesn't care about the cause, as long as he's sufficiently paid.

Ashrah

• All Asians Wear Conical Straw Hats: She might not be Asian per se, but she definitely has an Asian-sounding name. Unlike Raiden's more simple sedge cap, Ashrah's gasa is more festive, complete with several kanji.
• Ascended Demon
• The Atoner
• Beauty Equals Goodness: According to demons in the Netherrealm, Ashrah once resembled them, but as she began to purify herself with the Kriss, she soon took on the form she has now.
• Cleavage Window: Has a slight one in her default outfit. While all of the other ladies usually have their breasts exposed to some degree, this is notable because this is the only form of Fan Service present for Ashrah. Her alternate makes her cleavage more notable, ditches the hat, turns her sleeves transplant, and shows off her legs, but still manages to be among the more conservative outfits for the women.
• Defector From Decadence: Like Sareena, she was a former "sister" of the Brotherhood of Shadow. Eventually, she decides to stop following Shinnok's orders and escaped.
• Hot Chick with a Sword: A standout case, as the Kriss factors heavily into her backstory.
• Hunter Of Her Own Kind: Ashrah is a demon who hunts other demons on a quest to purify herself.
• Knight Templar: In her quest to become purified, she's gone a bit crazy, especially since even after becoming pure enough to be expelled from the Netherrealm, she continued to hunt "evil" beings, turning to attention to Nitara's vampire race.
• Lady of War
• Light'Em Up: Thanks to the power of her Kriss, Ashrah uses weaponized light in battle.
  • Death From Above: One of her specials fires a ball of light into the air, which then falls upon her opponent's head, much like Kai in 4.
• Light Is Good: Subverted by her Knight Templar qualities.
• Mistaken Identity: A meta example. Fans tend to see her as a female Raiden due to her white garb and sedge cap (complete with a long, flowing veil that mirrors Raiden's cape), but Ed Boon says that this was not the intention. Keep in mind that this did not stop a certain number of fans from shipping them, some even going as far as originally believing her to be his wife.
• Nice Hat
• Rule of Symbolism: It should come as no surprise that the character on the quest to purify herself has Light'Em Up-based powers, is garbed in white, and dresses in the most concealing, least racy outfits out of all the females.
• Spell My Name with an "S": In earlier builds of Deception, her name was occasionally spelled as Ashra.
• Spin Attack: Her Spin Cycle is the traditional variant. She also possesses a move called Nature's Torpedo, where Ashrah launches herself like... a human torpedo.
• Stripperiffic: She has also averted this. Played straight with her alternate outfit, though it is still relatively conservative compared to pretty much any of the other female Kombatants.
• Tall, Dark and Bishoujo
• Token Wholesome
• Unwitting Pawn: Her Kriss is using Ashrah to get its revenge on the Vampire race.
• Voodoo Doll: Used in her second Fatality from Deception.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Arguably, the Datusha itself. In its eyes, the Vampire race is Exclusively Evil for draining the blood of other life forms.
• Woman in White

Darrius

• Badass
• Badass Beard
• Badass Mustache
• Bald Black Leader Guy: Keep in mind that he's Seidan like Hotaru and Dairou.
• Blade Below the Shoulder: He dual wields them as his weapons.
• Cool Shades
• Grievous Harm with a Body: His Arm Bash Fatality.
• Token Minority: Replaced Jax as the sole black male Kombatant on the roster for Deception. Also, he's the only black Seidan to be seen in the series to date.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: His alt.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: He killed Dairou's family to turn Dairou against the Seidan Guard.

Havik

• Ambiguously Human: He has half his face ripped off, and he can bend in ways that would kill most people, but it's unclear if he's some sort of zombie or if that's normal for Chaosrealmers.
• Arch Enemy: Hotaru.
• Ax Crazy
• Blue and Orange Morality: For him, Freedom and Chaos are synonymous and any sort of order is an affront to his definition of freedom. This is best demonstrated in why he seeks to aid Shao Kahn against Onaga. Despite the fact that both rulers are brutal in their governing style (with Shao Kahn possibly more so) and also share the goals of annexing other realms into Outworld, however, Shao Kahn has no interest in the everyday activities of those he has subjugated (at least as long as they don't fail to pay him tribute nor seek to revolt against him) whereas Onaga is a Visionary Villain who is very interested in organizing the realms to his liking. Thus, the latter's effort to suppress chaos leads him to join with Shao Kahn by default.
• The Cameo: Appears in Noob Saibot's Mortal Kombat 9 ending.
• Clothes Make the Maniac
• Cloudcuckoolander
• The Corrupter: Implied to be this for Kabal. Kabal had reformed since 3, but when Havik resuscitated him after Mavado's attack, he was somehow able to rekindle Kabal's anarchist ideals.
• Dem Bones: One of his specials is a phantasmal projectile in the form of a skull.
• For the Evulz: Or perhaps it would be better to say For The Chaoz. Havik only seeks to stir up as much chaos as possible, making him a Foil to both the heroes and villains.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: His Batter Up Fatality consists of Havik tearing off his opponent's leg and then using it to knock their head off.
• I'm a Humanitarian: His Human Pencil Sharpener Fatality. His mouth is the pencil sharpener, by the way. When his meal is finished, Havik actually chokes on and regurgitates some meat chunks.
• In the Hood: His alt.
• I Reject Your Reality: Fancies himself to be Above Good and Evil, and just going around to spread chaos and anarchy.
• Meaningful Name: Exactly What It Says on the Tin, really.
• Monochromatic Eyes
• Neck Snap: One of his moves has him do this to himself. And it heals him.
• Nice Headdress: Emblematic of his status as a cleric of Chaos.
• Rubber Man: To an extent. Havik can freely contort his body allowing him to do such feats like twisting his torso like a corkscrew and snapping his own neck to regain health. In order to keep things fair, he's still affected by Fatalities that invoke breaking limbs.
• Stealth Mentor/Sink or Swim Mentor: For Shujinko in Konquest Mode. In order to teach the man, he has to go all out and be unpredictable. Whereas Shujinko thought it was an unpredictable and unorthodox training exercise masked as a fight to the death, Havik explicitly tells him that he was indeed trying to kill him.
• This Is Gonna Suck: If he's knocked off of the Sky Tower in Deception, Havik will briefly stop screaming to proclaim, "Man, this is gonna suck!" before resuming his scream.
• The Unfettered: As noted under Blue and Orange Morality, he despises any sort of order of which includes moral restraint.

Hotaru

"There is an order to the universe... laws that all of nature must obey."

• Arch Enemy: Havik.
• Badass Long Hair
• Blade on a Stick: His Naginata.
• Blinded by the Light: Delivers this to Sub-Zero in Kenshi's Deception ending. Unfortunately for Hotaru, Kenshi doesn't have a dependence on sight and proceeds to slay Hotaru.
• Cool Helmet: In his alt.
• The Fettered
• The Fundamentalist: Hotaru, as with the rest of the Seidan Guard, believe that "Freedom leads to anarchy, anarchy leads to Chaos, Chaos leads to suffering."
• Gender Blender Name/Meaningful Name: His name is a woman's name. However, it's Japanese for firefly, explaining his powers (evocative of a firefly's glow and flight) and the motif of his armor (an insectoid-like exoskeleton).
• Killed Off for Real: What happens to him in two of Deception's arcade endings, those being Kenshi Takahashi's and Dairou's, but subverted by way of both being non-canon with his appearance in Mortal Kombat: Armageddon alive and well. Though it is played straight when his luck runs out as shown in the intro of Mortal Kombat 9 showing him among the deceased in the Battle of Armageddon.
• Knight Templar: See The Fundamentalist above.
• Light Is Not Good: He may have the bright thing about him, but he sides with his debut appearance's Big Bad because he believes it will bring order.
• Long-Haired Pretty Boy: Long hair, youthful looks.
• Magma Man: In the form of his Lava Burst attack.
• Monochromatic Eyes
• Neck Snap: As a Fatality. Thrice to be exact.
• Odd Friendship: With Shujinko, if Konquest Mode is any indication. Hotaru trained Shujinko as a Seidan guardsman, and when Shujinko is thrown into jail, Hotaru had intended to come on his behalf to negate Shujinko's sentence... right as Shujinko was about to escape and Dairou had killed several of his men. Needless to say, BFF time ended there.
• Spam Attack: His Grasshopper special, similar in effect to Liu Kang's Bicycle Kick.
• The Stoic
• Wearing a Flag on Your Head: Wears two Seidan Guard Flags on the back of his armor as a testament to the Seidan Guard's code of ethics and discipline.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: He's willing to preserve order at any cost, including serving Onaga.
• White-Haired Pretty Boy: As can be seen in his image.

Kira

• Absolute Cleavage: Her alt.
• Bare Your Midriff: Again, her alt.
• Blue Oni: To Kobra's Red.
• Can't Stand Them Can't Live Without Them: Her Deception ending indicates that she doesn't think very highly of Kobra, yet in her Armageddon ending, the first thing she does with her newly attained power is resurrect the slain Kobra. He kills her for being so weak, but still, it means a lot, coming from her.
• Combat Stilettos
• Composite Character: She's Sonya and Kano rolled into one.
• Dark Action Girl
• Distaff Counterpart: The developers referred to her as a "female Kano".
• The Dragon, Evil Genius, and the Dark Chick: In the new Black Dragon (with Kabal as the Big Bad, Kobra as The Brute, and Havik possibly as The Man Behind the Man), she kind of fulfills these roles by default. The latter is most prominent. Her Deception ending, in which she exploits Kobra's lack of focus and his blind ferocity to open him up for attack and subsequently kill him, causing Kabal to give her the chance to handpick two more recruits to be tested in the same manner she and Kobra were, does cement the former two tropes though.
• Evil Redhead
• Femme Fatale: Shades of it, as seen in her Sexy Walk below and her getting-up animation between rounds should she lose.
• Girlish Pigtails: Missing in her alt.
• Hell-Bent for Leather
• Impossibly Low Neckline: In her alternate costume.
• Kiss of Death: A variation in that she blows the kiss, much like Sonya would do in later games.
• Knife Nut: Dual-wields elegantly-designed knives (the Dragon Teeth) as her Weapon of Choice.
• Mix and Match: Her regular attire is mostly red, with the exception of the corset she wears under her jacket and her heels, which are black. Her alternate mostly inverts the color scheme of her default outfit.
• Punny Name: Could be unintentional, but "Kira" sounds similar to how a Japanese dialect would render the English word "killer".
• Rolling Attack: Directly lifted from Kano.
• Sex Slave: As of 9, she has been captured and Made a Slave as Shao Kahn's concubine along with Tanya.
• Sexy Walk: During her Torso Rip Fatality in Deception.
• She's Got Legs
• Short, Redheaded and Bishoujo: Going by her bio, she's 5'5" (the shortest of the females by one or two inches), but everything else (minus the Rapunzel Hair) lines up pretty much 100% with the rest of the trope.
• Unholy Matrimony: In Kobra's Armageddon ending, he takes her as his wife, though she kills him with a Kiss of Death.
  • And in her own, she resurrects Kobra with her powers to take him as her lover, but then HE betrays and kills her.
• Villainous Crossdresser: Before Kabal found her and recruited her for the Black Dragon, Kira was posing as a man in Afghanistan, selling weapons to terrorists.

Shujinko

• All Your Powers Combined: Uses his ability to learn the skills of any fighter (given to him by Onaga himself) to unite the powers of the entire cast of Deception into himself. He then finishes off the Dragon King with a rainbow Falcon Punch.
• Ascended Fanboy: It had been his dream since childhood to enter Mortal Kombat and defeat Shang Tsung. He was given the chance to enter this world, but at what cost?
• The Atoner
• Badass Beard
• Badass Grandpa: In his default appearance in the game. Konquest mode which takes place before the events of the story allows to play him in his younger form.
• Badass Long Hair
• Bald of Awesome: In his alt.
• Did Not Do the Research: He's a mostly-Chinese guy named "Main Character" in Japanese.
• Ditto Fighter
• Face Heel Turn: Happens in his Armageddon ending where he uses his newfound power to kill all the other Kombatants.
• Idiot Hero: "I will do as you ask" is basically a Catch Phrase for him.
• Magikarp Power: When you first get him, he has no moves; you have to go back into Story Mode and unlock his moves.
• Mega Manning: His entire repertoire of special moves is assembled this way. He uses Scorpion's Spear, Sub-Zero's Freeze, Liu Kang's Bicycle Kick, Raiden's Flying Thunder God, Ermac's Telekinetic Slam, Sindel's Sliding Foot Grab, Li Mei's Flipping Heel Kick and Kobra's Flaming Fist. Shujinko also borrows Havik's Chaos Axe Kick (his throw).
• Mentors
• My God, What Have I Done?
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: He unleashes one of these on Onaga.
• Old Master: For Li Mei anyway.
• Punny Name: Sound innocuous at first, but in Japanese, "Shujinko" means "Main Kharacter".
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: He defeats Onaga at the end of Deception, though Onaga's soul is pulled out of Reptile's body before he can land the final blow.
• Unwitting Pawn: In both timelines.

Kobra

Kobra was a martial arts student from Manhattan. He was adept at fighting, but he was curious how much damage he could really do in a fight. He took to the streets and found the thrill of kombat irresistible. He began fighting gangbangers and drug dealers, but his Blood Lust was ever growing, and so he began killing indiscriminately. When the police were taking him to jail for his crimes, Kabal and Kira broke him out and recruited him to the Black Dragon. He joined, eager to take his violence to higher levels.

---

• ...And Show It to You: In fitting fashion for a Black Dragon member, one of Kobra's Fatalities is this. He puts a unique spin on it by slamming the heart back in the opponent's face. He also inverts this with his Hara-Kiri, where he rips out his own heart.
• Arrogant Kung Fu Guy
• Ax Crazy
• Blond Guys Are Evil
• Blood Knight
• Blood Lust: At first, he tried to justify his killings with his victims (drug dealers and gangbangers), but the thrill of fighting had him eventually killing for money and looting on the side. Kobra wonders how many lives he's ruined, but simply doesn't care.
• For the Evulz
• Hammerspace: There are no mini-baton things on his model.
• In a Single Bound: In the intro to Armageddon, he can be seen high in the air fighting Shujinko.
• In the Hood: His alternate costume.
• Mistaken Identity: His placeholder name was "Ken Masters" due to their aesthetic similarities. When images of this prototype footage was released, many believed that Kobra was actually Ken.
• Off with His Head: One of his Fatalities.
• Playing with Fire
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: To Kira's Blue.
• Shotoclone
• Unholy Matrimony: In his Armageddon ending, he takes Kira as his wife, but she betrays and kills him.
  • And in Kira's ending, she uses her newfound powers to resurrect him and, to thank her, he betrays and kill her.

Onaga

• Assimilation Plot: Unknowingly under the influence of the One Being, he has plans of fusing all reality into himself.
• Back from the Dead: During his fight with Shujinko, Nightwolf casts a sealing spell that drags Onaga's essence out of Reptile's body and down into the Netherrealm. Shinnok later releases him in exchange for his cooperation. He also possesses the ability to constantly resurrect his mooks, thus their reputation for being invincible.
• Berserk Button: Shao Kahn. His white-hot hatred for his backstabbing former adviser makes the Scorpion/Sub-Zero rivalry look tame. In the intro to Armageddon, Onaga is nowhere to be seen while the other combatants duke it out in a battle royale. Where does he come in? Swooping down to interrupt Shang Tsung's battle with Shao Kahn just so that he can be the one to give Shao Kahn his just desserts.
• Big Bad: He is the main villain and Final Boss of Deception.
  • Bigger Bad: He was the original ruler of Outworld before Shao Khan.
• Blow You Away: The flap of his wings generates enough gust to push opponents away as the Dragon King propels backwards.
• Boss Arena Idiocy: Both played straight and subverted. If you try to tackle Onaga head-on, he'll probably come across as a SNK Boss. However, if you walk into one of the six Kamidogu located in the corners of his arena, Onaga will immediately be knocked out of any attack he was attempting and will kneel over in a pain for a second, opening him up for a free combo. However, the Kamidogu don't regenerate between rounds, so you only get six shots in all of opening up a can of whup-ass on Onaga before you have to resort to fighting him fairly. Also, his arena contains a Death Trap; you can't knock him into the spikes, but he can knock you into them if you're by the edge.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: He does this to the five fallen heroes in Deception, making them his slaves. The five heroes being Kitana, Kung Lao, Jax, Johnny Cage and Sonya Blade.
• Breath Weapon: He's the Dragon King. What did you expect?
• Chekhov's Gunman: Mentioned in Deadly Alliance, rises to prominence in Deception.
  • He was originally planned to appear in Deadly Alliance, but was cut as the designers wanted to focus on the titular villains.
• Cool Helmet
• Eldritch Abomination: Concept art indicates that he would have become the One Being in his ending.
• Eviler Than Thou: Pulls this on the Deadly Alliance, and in Armageddon gets into an argument with Shao Kahn over which of them is The Emperor.
• Evil Overlord: The one who preceded Shao Kahn as the ruler of Outworld.
• Iconic Logo: He's the dragon of the Mortal Kombat logo.
• The Juggernaut: All the dialogue states that while he had the six kamidogu, he was invincible.
• Large and In Charge: The largest character in the series.
• Manipulative Bastard: "Oh hai, Shujinko. My name's Damashi, and I'm here to tell you that you're the Elder God's Champion, fated to embark on a great adventure!" This is Deception's Konquest Mode in a nutshell.
• Mascot: Word of God stated that he was the reason why Mortal Kombat has a dragon as its symbol.
• Meaningful Name: He's the Dragon King, and his name is made up of the Japanese word for king and the Sanskrit word for serpent.
• Mighty Glacier: Onaga is big and slow, but his blows are stronger than any character in the game, and he is immune to projectiles.
• Monster Modesty: Doubles as Modest Royalty, only wearing a helmet and few pieces of armor.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Due to the influence of the One Being, he aims to merge all reality into himself.
• Our Dragons Are Different: He walks on two legs, is mostly humanoid in appearance, and the Shokan are supposedly his half-breed offspring.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Thanks to Shao Kahn's assassination, he's dead by the series proper until he Shujinko gathers the Kamidogu.
• Walking Shirtless Scene
• Winged Humanoid
• Won't Work On Me: Projectiles are damn near useless against Onaga. This is even foreshadowed in Deception's intro cinematic, where he takes the full brunt of the combined powers of Raiden, Shang Tsung and Quan Chi and brushes it off quite effortlessly.