Dark Raiden | Wasted Plotential

hello and welcome to wasted potential where we discuss the wasted potential of our favorite plot lines when discussing wasted Concepts in MK I don't think there is any idea more wasted than dark Raiden mainly because they keep doing it and it's shocking no pun intended that this is the case given that say for the DC crossover dark Raiden has some presence in every Mainline MK game since 2004's deception that is to say for the last 20 years and not just as a costume he is consistently part of the story dark Raiden debuted in deception resulting from his futile sacrifice to stop Onaga many fans claim it's from his exposed Essence being touched by Onaga but I cannot find where this was stated where have I heard that before while his narrative role was limited in that game having the feel of a mid credits reveal more than anything he still managed to make quite the impact via his ending similar to how Raiden narrated The endings in Deadly Alliance and Argus wood in Armageddon deceptions endings are narrated by shujinko except Raiden he narrates that one because he kills shujinko for his hubris while not Cannon him telling us how he killed the game's protagonist and narrator is very striking in fact were the next game not designed to include everyone making any non-essential deaths and extra complication to address I wonder if this would have been Cannon maybe dark Raiden and zombie Liu Kang being the respective boss and sub boss of mk7 could have been the direction they took but what we did get was Armageddon in which Raiden has a small but notable role ignore the intro because while one is borderline non-cannon Raiden's role here is to try and stop Tav for the villainous Alliance having joined them to protect Earth realm while plotting their downfall in his ending he uses the power of Blaze to destroy all Realms but Earth realm even neutral and Allied Realms to me this was the peak of dark Raiden because he was an extremist version of his usual self determined to protect Earth realm only now single-mindedly pursuing that goal at the cost of all else great stuff I'd love to have seen where this story could have gone afterwards unfortunately what we got next was the 2011 relaunch this game opens with an Armageddon where shaah wins and Raiden is his final opposition despite having the dark Raiden design he doesn't much act like him but one could argue the limited time and the specific circumstances justify him not displaying these traits he sends Visions back to his MK1 self and then dies in MKX this new Raiden absorbs shino's corruption when purifying The jinay Becoming dark Raiden in the mid-credit scene he then threatens the Revenant liukang and Katana and makes clear that like his previous Incarnation this Raiden patience for Mortals has worn thin leaving us with so many wonderful possibilities to mul over for the next four years until the next game and the arcade endings fueled this while not depicted this way to avoid spoilers Raiden's actions in several endings are clearly meant to be a result of his corruption he challenges cotal khn's outworld to Mortal Kombat collecting those in need of direction to join him and turning his old friend borich Cho against him that this scenario was explored in around four endings suggest this was going to be a big thing in the next game or at least be mentioned as an event that occurred in between to explain the absences of certain characters only for mk11 to then famously drop the ball astonishingly hard despite using him in the game's reveal trailer and as the character select portraits they clearly only used him because it had already been set up they had no intention of using him here at all in spite of the premise dark Raiden is around for one chapter leading the Special Forces against the Revenant in the nether realm with a few intros suggesting that this has been going on for a while with a few revenants being killed only for aftermath to then Recon the specific example given so who even knows honestly aside from his design and the new red lightning brought over from Injustice 2 there really isn't anything dark about this version of Raiden the most he does is being sensitive about Sonia's death and even then he's not dismissive about it but instead trying to make Cassie feel better and doing a bad job aftermath would later also cement the idea of Raiden just not understanding Mortals and their feelings so there's nothing about dark Raiden here that is actually you know dark I guess you could count torturing shinok but is that that really all it takes he is erased when the past Raiden is brought to the present having accomplished nothing not even the destruction of the bone Temple is successful because chronica rebuilds it and it's then ignored completely leaving the undoing of Raiden's success as just a footnote until aftermath the story also suggests that shino's amulet can corrupt Raiden giving him a dark moment in both versions of the fire Garden scene even though him being corrupted was the reason he took shinox amulet and not vice versa we also learned that Raiden had been corrupted in several of the other timelines we only get glimpses of with chronica orchestrating it to turn him and Li Kang against each other if nothing else we can assume his MKX corruption was not part of Chron's Grand Design but it really does weaken the concept of dark Raiden that it's always external factors and Chron's manipulations that make it happen removing Raiden's agency in his new outlook and then aftermath features one last Cameo by dark Raiden in the Shang song ending where he and fujin are enforcers conquering realms for Shang I think it's lazy that they kept the same dark Raiden design instead of using the C iation system to make a new one what Shang Tsung and Raiden both have the exact same sense of Aesthetics this Raiden then makes his way over into m1k serving his Titan shang's enforcer along with dark synell he loses easily to Molina which is absurd he may be the dark Raiden that appears briefly in the final battle but it's not clear and now the recent fifth season of invasions has introduced yet another dark Raiden who is the most interesting take we've seen since the Midway era the opening of the floodgates at the end of the story mode has led to this Raiden attempting to holds his will across all timelines to protect every Earth realm and Destroy every threat to them he's defeated by a cabal of heroic Raiden including the lamber and DCU versions once he is cured of his corruption he's then banished to the void by Liu Kang until he can prove the earnestness of his desire to redeem himself interestingly this dark Raiden is the young mortal Raiden but this detail is never explored which is one of the general flaws of invasion storytelling since season 2 but more on that in a future episode for now I'd like to go over some of these depictions and discuss ways dark Raiden's potential could have been better utilized the original version was handled well enough in the Original Stories as a teaser then a bit player I see no specific issues with the Midway version he just needed a better followup than MK9 be a sequel to deception or Armageddon him being a threat to all the Realms outside of Earth realm could have led to a very unique roster where we focus on edenia chaos realm order realm vus and the like having characters from those going up against dark Raiden after he makes a declaration of intent to acoss the Realms While others Ally with him in hopes of either saving their realm or overthrowing him once he's won alternatively he could be the reason for Armageddon since his goal is to destroy several worlds and all of their inhabitants in either case he ultimately meets the Fate that fujin Armageddon bio suggests he was supposed to when he died reincarnated in Earth realm as a fresh Soul Amnesia and neither good nor evil maybe this new Young Raiden could be one of the new generation characters in the original plan for that you could even make him a girl if you wanted the sky the limit for MK9 and X there's not much to say add a line or two that makes the MK9 version seem darker and have MKX leading to my concept from the dark Raiden and Revenant episode of this show for MK1 the first obvious choice is to have dark Raiden stick around he could become a servant of chronica after she manipulates him or be a free agent that causes trouble for both sides leading to a mirror match during the story either way but my main idea here actually deals with the past Raiden with his newly established General potential for turning evil I think that could have been utilized in the Final Chapter despite how often we have fights between Raiden and Liu Kang in these modes we have never played as Liu Kang for one so picture this when Raiden saves Revenant Liu Kang it is not a bizarre Fusion of the two and past liukang like his MKX self in the Gin say Raiden instead absorbs the evil from Revenant liukang transforming the two into fire god Liu Kang and dark Raiden Raiden is overwhelmed by his frustrations with how things have gone over the course of this timeline and general evil driving him mad Liu Kang is then forced to kill him perhaps utilizing the same method he attempted back in MK9 with Raiden's death here we have the liukang we followed in MK9 and X taking on the fire god role instead of just writing him off as a lost cause I plan to go further into this in a future video but I think the final chapter of m1k would have been stronger if every character got a unique fight or two just for them dark Raiden could be a unique fa for either mortal Raiden or fire god leukang Raiden gets to see what he could become not just be told about it second hand which would be a better justification for him starting to worry about his future as seen in his arcade ending and maybe he fights alongside his God counterpart's reassurance alternatively leukang could fight him in this or the previous chapter as a final passing of the torch from the previous protector God to the current one leuk Kang telling his former mentor to rest easy knowing that leukang will protect Earth realm instead this extra Focus could reveal more about shang's timeline maybe that Liu Kang has a similar relationship with dark Raiden to the traditional versions of the two just evil and for the invasions version I just want to know how this morle Raiden became corrupted was this the failed reality of another Liu Kang is he the one seen dying in the intro why is fujin still a God here just a few explanations that could have been sprinkled in via the masesa boss introductions would be nice I also think it would be radical if all the surviving Invaders including Raiden and Scorpion would all come back in either the series finale of invasions or in the story expansion just have them show up to help in the final battle against the biggest baddest Titan of them all for a concept they keep using it really is shocking again not intended how little of notes has been done narrative ly to explore the motivations and ramifications of an evil version of Raiden at this point we may as well ask the guy in charge of the Legends films to do something about it because the games don't seem to want to it started out as a Twist on a long established character serving as another way to corrupt what was once good and further darken the MK world first the hero dies then the mentor goes back sure he didn't do much but there wasn't room for him to interception while Armageddon used him the perfect amount for a game with 62 Fighters then we reboot back to good Raiden only for him to go back again in the next game gets erased and still be presented as a direction the second replacement can still go then he comes back as a cameo that Spurs the fourth iteration into learning to master his Rage which I guarantee will be used to make his lightning red for enhanced specials in the next game what began as a cool new idea with so much potential has devolved into a tiresome inevitability that Neel repeatedly insists upon and then decides it's bored and wants to go back to how things were before he's like a metaphor for the series at large actually with the current Multiverse Focus it's clear that we're going to see more dark ridens from other timelines in future be they mortal or God variants and while I'm sure there's no hope whatsoever for whatever Fusion character we see from havoc's timeline to be interesting I hope they can do a story in the next game that puts more focus on specific alternate versions of characters and explores how and why they are different Beyond surface level visual differences and a switch in alignment if you liked this video why not subscribe and support me on patreon Like These Fine people here if not then make sure to share it with your enemies so they can suffer along with you today's recommended video is the latest episode of the combat Kings podcast where we talk about season 5 of invasions including dark Raiden because the only other dark Raiden videos on this bloody website are lazy compilations of scenes featuring him that get hundreds of thousands of views yes I am bitter

Channel: The4thSnake

Views: 57,486

Keywords: mortal kombat, mk, mortal kombat 1, mk1, mortal komabt 11, mk11, mortal komabt x, mkx, mk9, deception, armageddon, raiden, dark raiden, evil raiden, invasions, season 5, season of storms

Id: jf3j4KWmiWY

Length: 11min 23sec (683 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 27 2024