Todd McFarlane Knows Exactly Why Spawn and Mortal Kombat 11 Work So Well Together

Out of all the heroes, villains, or any other type of guest character from comics that NetherRealm Studios could pick from to have in Mortal Kombat 11, Spawn a natural fit. The character’s mature themes and violent tendencies lend themselves to Mortal Kombat quite well, and if people weren’t convinced of that from knowing the character already, the reveal of Spawn’s Fatalities, his Fatal Blow, and other brutal moves left little question about whether he belonged in the game or not. Todd McFarlane, the creator of Spawn who turned NetherRealm loose to create their own version of the fighter, has some ideas about why the collaboration works so well and says it helps that there’s a bit of craziness shared between the franchises.

Speaking to ComicBook.com about Spawn’s inclusion in Mortal Kombat 11, McFarlane gave his perspective on how Spawn’s able to mesh well with the rest of the Mortal Kombat roster. Spawn’s been in other games before including his own games and as a guest fighter in Soulcalibur II, but he said the level of intensity that both Spawn and Mortal Kombat are at creates a natural relationship between the two.

“I think there’s a little bit of crazy on both of our sides,” McFarlane said. “There’s sort of polite and then there’s like conservative and then there’s like pretty good. And then there’s just like, ‘Oh my gosh, what am I looking at?’”

McFarlane praised those leading the charge on Mortal Kombat 11 and their decision to go all out on a game he said may offend people’s senses. If that’s the case, he said that’s fine because “nobody is trying to make a game for mom.” That’s a different type of game, he said, and the people who want something like that can go play Tetris or Words With Friends.

“And they just said, ‘Hey, we can either try and appease and try and see if we can keep everybody happy and do a wide ranging game that is going to just touch a little bit on everybody’s sort of good nature or we could just do some f—ing cool game,’” he said. “And I think there’s plenty of those people and everybody else get out of the way, right?”

Spawn is coming to Mortal Kombat 11 on March 17th for those with the Kombat Pack and will be widely released on March 24th. For those who think after this guest appearance that Spawn deserves his own video game again, McFarlane agrees with you.