Shao Kahn
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Shao Kahn is a boss from the Mortal Kombat fighting game series.
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About Shao Kahn
Shao Kahn, who resembles an Asian warrior-king in many respects, embodies evil in many forms. He is known for his great strength, callousness, brutality and his fondness of personal executions, but rises above the level of a mere warlord through his intelligence and knowledge of black magic. Like his subordinate Shang Tsung, he has the power to consume other souls. His greatest strength is probably his ability to work towards his goals with great tenacity, but his greatest weakness is his overconfidence.
Storyline
Shao Kahn originally served as an advisor to Onaga when he ruled Outworld as the Dragon King. At one point, Shao Kahn had Onaga poisoned. Leading whatever troops that did not commit suicide following Onaga's death, Kahn continued many of his former emperor's plans. He continued to add lesser realms to Outworld, either through direct conquest or through Mortal Kombat. A milestone in his military victories was the merging of Edenia with Outworld after his kombatants had won ten Mortal Kombat tournaments in a row. On the battlefield, Kahn killed King Jerrod, and took Queen Sindel as his wife, raising her daughter, Kitana, as his own. He also had her trained as his bodyguard and personal assassin. Sindel took her own life shortly after the defeat because she was unwilling to live her life subservient to Shao Kahn. However, the emperor made sure that she would be someday reborn on Earthrealm, so he could reclaim her there. This was a back-up plan to take this coveted world, which had been the endgoal of his conquests all along.
Meanwhile, Kahn tried to use Mortal Kombat to annex Earth to Outworld. A turning point came when Prince Goro defeated the Great Kung Lao and started a winning streak that would last nine generations and 500 years. Shang Tsung, a shapeshifter, supervised the tournament. The tenth Mortal Kombat however, saw the defeat of both Goro and Tsung by a Shaolin monk, Liu Kang, destroying five hundred years' work. Shang Tsung begged for his life with Shao Kahn, and came up with a plan to lure Earth's chosen warriors to Outworld for a second tournament. If Earthrealm's champions would be killed, they would not be able to cause further damage to Kahn's plans. With the captured Kano and Sonya Blade as bait, and enraging Liu Kang by sending Baraka and his troops to destroy the Shaolin temples, they confidently waited for the Earth warriors to come and fall into the trap. Despite Kahn's vast power, Liu Kang's determination saw him through, and he defeated the despot. Unwilling to accept defeat, Kahn called his armies to destroy the Earthrealm warriors. They fled back to Earthrealm, out of Kahn's clutches.
By this time, Shang Tsung had good news for the emperor: he could resurrect queen Sindel in Earthrealm, and Kahn could reach across the border to claim her, which would merge Earthrealm and Outworld in the process. Kahn told him to do it, and when he reached across, the realms merged, and the souls of every living being in Earthrealm were ripped from their bodies. Kahn's day finally seemed to have come. Lord Raiden had protected the souls of a handful of warriors, but Kahn sent extermination squads to kill them. In the ensuing fights, Kahn was confronted by Kung Lao, a Shaolin monk and descendant of the warrior Goro defeated to become champion of Kombat, but Kahn crushed him. Raiden brought Liu Kang to fight him again, and the two of them wore Kahn down enough for him to recall his squads and retreat to Outworld, which stopped the merger and restored Earthrealm to its status before the merger took place. To make matters worse, many of his former loyals had abandoned him, and Kitana had succeeded in turning Sindel to her side, and restore Edenia as an independent realm. In three years' time, he had also lost three high ranking officers of his army.
The emperor was now greatly weakened. The Edenians had made peace and military treaties with the Shokan, whom Kahn had always heavily relied on, and were ready to attack Outworld a few years later. It was only by his new commander Kano's ingenuity, and the stealth of his unreliable assassin Noob Saibot that Kahn was able to save the day and force the Edenian army into a draw. Then, Shang Tsung came to Kahn's court with the sorcerer Quan Chi, and they announced their undying loyalty to the master of Outworld. As they did so, they sprung on him, overwhelmed him and killed him. His skull-faced crown fell from his head and bounced to the ground. In a show of ultimate cunning, however, it appeared that Kahn had not been killed at all. Rather, the emperor had felt threatened for some time by forces from both the outside and the inside, and had installed a clone in the palace so he could rebuild his power base from another place. As the Deadly Alliance was destroyed and Onaga resurrected, Kahn inevitably began planning to kill his ancient master again, and show he was the true lord of Outworld.
Movie appearances
Shao Kahn appears in both Mortal Kombat movies, although he is played by different actors (the first is only a bit part, and he appears mainly as a special effect). In the second movie, played by Brian Thompson, he is ultimately defeated and killed by Liu Kang.
Television appearances
Shao Kahn appears in Mortal Kombat: Conquest, played by Jeff Meek. Despite having lost much of his physical stature from the games and films, he has a much more threatening disposition, though he rarely interacts with the heroes of the series (due to his inability to travel to Earth). Jeff Meek's role is more interesting when one considers that he played Raiden on the same show, occasionally opposite himself.
| Preceded by: Onaga | Emperor of Outworld many millennia BMK - 10 AMK | Succeeded by: the Deadly Alliance
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