You’ve astir apt seen the silhouette of Mortal Kombat’s dragon logo truthful often that you don’t adjacent deliberation astir however small consciousness it makes. There weren’t immoderate dragons successful the archetypal Mortal Kombat, and it doesn’t origin into the backstory astir an interdimensional martial arts tourney to find the destiny of the planet. So what’s the deal? Co-creator John Tobias present explains that the iconic dragon was inspired by a statue connected his boss’ desk.

Tobias precocious re-discovered his archetypal pencil sketch for the dragon logo and took to Twitter to stock the backstory down however it ended up becoming the cardinal awesome for the present decades-running warring crippled series. Midway wide manager Ken Fedesna had a aureate statue of a four-toed Chinese dragon connected his table and Tobias seemingly saw it 1 time erstwhile a workfellow borrowed it to scan and upload it arsenic an plus successful 1 of the stages.

“The inspiration to usage a dragon arsenic the fictional tournament’s awesome came from ‘Dragon Attack,’ which was successful contention arsenic our game’s rubric before [Ed Boon] and I changed it to ‘Mortal Kombat,” helium wrote connected Twitter yesterday. That moving rubric was inspired by a Queen opus of the aforesaid name. While it was yet ditched, the colors mentioned successful the archetypal opus formed the ground for the eventual arcade cabinet, which besides included the Chinese dragon from Fedesna’s desk.

“I had been reasoning of creating an icon to correspond the fictional tournament, but besides to marque the crippled with a symbol… similar Superman’s ‘S’ oregon Batman’s bat symbol,” Tobias wrote. The last plan ended up being a operation of the yin-yang awesome and the illustration of the dragon’s head. Tobias’ sister thought it looked similar a seahorse, but 30 years aboriginal it’s synonymous with 1 of the bloodiest and astir fashionable warring crippled franchises ever. The original statue is inactive astir too.

Meanwhile, fans are hopeless for quality of the adjacent crippled successful the series. The past 1 came retired successful 2019, and truthful acold determination haven’t been immoderate hints astir erstwhile Mortal Kombat 12 tin beryllium expected. Director Ed Boon and NetherRealm Studios were expected to pivot to moving connected Injustice 3, but there’s been nary authoritative announcement connected that either, and the messy Warner Bros. Discovery merger has immoderate fearing the worst. Maybe NetherRealm tin capable the spread with a 30th day postulation that brings the series’ past into the present.