The first Mortal Kombat to allow Johnny Cage to perform his "crotch punch" on female characters.
This game acts as a reboot to the entire franchise, retelling the events of the first three video games: Mortal Kombat (1992), Mortal Kombat II (1993) and Mortal Kombat 3 (1995) establishing a new timeline.
The first Mortal Kombat game to be made under the Warner Brothers acquisition of Midway Games.
The soundtrack comes from previous Mortal Kombat games.
One of Shang Tsung's fatalities is turning into an evil clown and shooting his opponent in the head while laughing maniacally. This fatality reuses the uncensored animation from The Joker's fatality from the previous game Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe (2008). Ironically, Shang Tsung's evil clown fatality has a more graphic result than even the uncensored "Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe" Joker fatality.