Clever Mortal Kombat Easter Egg References a Mortal Kombat 3 Character

With how many characters there are in the Mortal Kombat series, it’s understandable that not all of them can fit into just one movie. Putting too many in the debut film in the rebooted series would be overwhelming for newcomers and too busy for anyone to enjoy, so of course some have to be omitted or at least saved for later. Others, however, at least made an appearance of some sort even if they were relegated to Easter eggs alone. One example of a character reference of that kind found in the Mortal Kombat movie was a callback to a Mortal Kombat 3 character.

Spoiler Warning: Spoilers for the Mortal Kombat Movie Are Found Below

The character in question, as those who’ve watched the movie by now might’ve already guessed, is Nightwolf, the Native American Mortal Kombat fighter first introduced as a playable character in Mortal Kombat 3. He made appearances in plenty of games afterwards with his most recent appearance being a DLC fighter in Mortal Kombat 11, but if you didn’t play that game or didn’t recall him from his debut, there’s a chance you might’ve missed the Easter egg entirely.

Mortal Kombat references the character whenever Sonya Blade is giving Cole Young a crash course in the Mortal Kombat tournament and what it means for the universe overall. While the camera pans over a wall of champions from past Mortal Kombat tournaments, we seen an old photo of a Native American character who sure looks like he could be Nightwolf.

Upon closer inspection, it seems that character is actually Nightwolf – or at least he is a Nightwolf. Details surrounding his image above provide context for the character.

The caption for the photo refers to the combatant as a “Matoka warrior.” Nightwolf’s Mortal Kombat backstory originally had him as a member of the Lakota-Sioux tribe, but that was changed in Mortal Kombat 11 whenever he was declared to be a member of the Matoka tribe.

Our second confirmation of this character’s identity comes from the text to the right of the picture. While it adds a space between “night” and “wolf,” the intent to highlight that part of the text was clear. Most of the text is blurry, but the “Night wolf” phrase seems as though it was left legible on purpose.

We said earlier that this is “a” Nightwolf and perhaps not “the” Nightwolf from any one game because of another detail from Mortal Kombat 11. The game informed players that “Nightwolf” was a title passed onto deserving individuals in the Matoka Tribe and wasn’t just one person.

Considering how the movie adopted the character’s new story established in Mortal Kombat 11, the fact that his name is a title is good news for the movie’s inevitable sequels, too. It means that even though this Nightwolf in the image is evidently gone and only in historical records now, there’s still a chance another Nightwolf can make an appearance later on.

Mortal Kombat is now in theaters and is streaming on HBO Max. If you get to the end of the film and you’re still not quite sure what’s happened, we can help you out with that.