How many losers are there?

Question

Shao Kahn's forces during Mortal Kombat tournaments includes multiple combatants from various other realms (Scorpion, Sub Zero, Kitana, and Mileena immediately spring to mind), but to my memory, they are all from previously conquered realms.

The premise of the games and movies is that Shao Kahn's forces are trying to take over Earth's Realm. Aside from Earth's Realm and Outworld, are there other realms being actively represented in the tournaments? If so, does a overall victory in a single tournament by any one realm mean losses (and strikes against the required ten losses for conquering) for all the losing realms?

Answer 1

Mortal Kombat is a tournament of multiple single elimination matches between the heroes of two realms. It is not like multiple realms fighting at once.

Out world has conquered many realms, and their population are under Out world rulers control, and such represent Out World in Mortal Kombat that Out World fights in.

Note the four you mentioned, Subzero is earth realm (though their ancestors night have been from another realm), Scorpion was originally Earth Realm, and Kitana and Mileena have been described as Out world in some media.

Answer 2

I've played pretty much every game in the series and watched the movies, and the tournaments are what allows the absorption of one realm by another. The fighters in the tournaments are usually from one side or another, like the earth realm fighters are usually from earth realm and outworld fighters are usually from outworld but there are notable exceptions.

For example scorpion is one of these exceptions as he is a netherealm fighter under the control of Quan Chi in the first tournaments, and he fights for outworld as Shao Khan because Quan Chi wants his help in for a future tournament where netherealm is trying to conquer some realm. Kitana is another one as she is originally from Edenia which was absorbed by Outworld and she ends up fighting for Earth Realm.

So basically a series tournaments will eventually determine the fate of a realm, but the fighters in that tournament do not need to be from either realm participating just their allegiances declared, as scorpion eventually ends up fighting for earth in the later tournaments, like in scorpion's ending for MK:deception he is the one the ends up beating Onaga.