This article would have have been written much sooner if I didn’t get wrapped up in the world that is ‘Mortal Kombat lore.’ It’s more confusing than the third season of Lost. I mean who even knows that Sub-Zero is the younger brother of Noob Sabiot, a throw-away character the designers created just by reversing the letters of their last names. However, according to Mortal Kombat mythos, Noob Sabiot was actually Sub-Zero in the first incarnation of the game. Apparently after the second game, Sub-Zero murdered his older brother that impersonated him and then unmasked himself to show that he was the real Sub-Zero. Folks, I’m not even making this stuff up. Here’s a highly-confusing excerpt from Mortal Kombat’s wiki page.
It is believed that Sub-Zero was unmasked in Mortal Kombat 3 to give him an identity of his own. Because Sub-Zero had a nearly identical appearance to his elder brother from the first Mortal Kombat, fans didn’t necessarily buy that this new Sub-Zero was the younger brother of the first, and because the younger Sub-Zero had a storyline that depended on the elder Sub-Zero’s, the fans felt that this was the same Sub-Zero all along and begun to believe that there was only one Sub-Zero in the series. Midway gave Sub-Zero a new appearance and unmasked him to simply give him a new identity and clear the beliefs that there were two Sub-Zero’s and that the current Sub-Zero that exists today is the younger brother of the elder Sub-Zero.
A serious LOL if you think any of that makes any sense. Fortunately MMA has its very own Sub-Zero, and he’s an enigma in an entirely different capacity. Check out this new micro-documentary of Gunnar Nelson discussing his philosophy on fighting and life in general.
