Animalities returning to Mortal Kombat after almost 30 years

Mortal Kombat 1 is about to get a lot more beastly. Fan-favorite animalities are coming back to the franchise after 29 years away in a free update.

The updates were announced at San Diego Comic-Con over the weekend, alongside the ultimately more important Khaos Reigns expansion reveal.

Animalities, which were introduced in 1995’s Mortal Kombat 3, are just like fatalities, except instead of the character performing a brutal finisher, they transform into an animal and tear their opponent apart. In the trailer, we see a hippo chomping down, a gorilla tearing apart a mouth, and a dinosaur skeleton enjoying a meal.

Some of the animal transformations are kind of obvious; Scorpion would of course be a scorpion, for example. The gorilla and the T-Rex skeleton are new to the series, so it’s not clear who they are immediately. There will be an animality for every playable character, which we assume includes all DLC characters. What would the animality for Homelander be? Probably an eagle, but we’ll have to see when the update is released alongside Khaos Reigns on September 24 across all platforms.

Khaos Reigns is Mortal Kombat 1‘s big year two story update, bringing in new characters to take on Titan Havik, who is ready to cause chaos from an alternate timeline. The trailer unveiled our first official looks at Noob Saibot, Cyrax, and Sektor. As was the case for all characters in Mortal Kombat 1, they’ll feature new backstories. Noob Saibot is still the resurrected version of Sub-Zero, but he’s been made to fight alongside Havik, for example.

In case Homelander and Omni-Man weren’t enough, Ghostface from the Scream series, Conan the Barbarian, and the T-1000 from Terminator 2 are coming to the game in the next Kombat Pack DLC. Hopefully they get their own animalities too.

The Khaos Reigns expansion is now available for preorder on consoles and PC. Players will also get the previous Kombat Pack, which includes the six previous DLC characters and five Kameo fighters. Preorders also come with four new skins at launch, including Mortal Kombat 3 versions of Sub-Zero and Noob Sailbot.