Dead Pool

The Dead Pool is an arena in the Mortal Kombat series. The Dead Pool debuted in Mortal Kombat II and later reappeared in several sequels.

The Dead Pool is said to be a place for punishment and sacrifice. Captives would be bound with chains, then lowered into the acid below. Shang Tsung was said to have favored this method of punishment. The Dead Pool was a particular form of punishment sentenced to those condemned by Shao Kahn himself. The acid itself is a mass of residue of past creations from Shang Tsung's flesh pits.

Mortal Kombat: Deception
A 3D version of the Dead Pool appeared in Mortal Kombat: Deception. Instead of a straight walkway across the acid, players fight on a square patch of concrete in the middle of the acid. Players who are close to the edge can be knocked into the acid to perform a deathtrap, where an "Oh, whoa" would be heard as tribute to the MKII secret. Shang Tsung watches over the arena from a balcony, dressed in his original MKII outfit.

Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks
The arena also appears in Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks. The Shaolin Monks first enter this area after escaping the Wastelands. When players approach this arena, they are ambushed by undead bloody skeletons. They must knock the skeletons onto the hooks hanging from the ceiling to pass. In the next room, one must use the swing ability to leave the Dead Pool.

The Dead Pool can be unlocked as an arena in Versus mode. The versus mode variant of the stage has a T-shaped walkway with acid pools on both sides. The fighters can run around in the acid at the expense of health.

Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)
The Dead Pool appears in Mortal Kombat (2011). The arena is back to the single bridge that goes across the pool. The chains are now manually operated, handled by two executioners using a large reel. Prisoners are bound and suspended above the acid by the hooked chains where they are promptly dipped into the acidic pool after a few moments are then dragged back up with their flesh and skin disintegrated and torn as burnt corpses. In Mortal Kombat (2011), instead of falling into the acidic pool and coming back up as a skeleton, the victim will flail around in the pool as the acid dissolves their flesh and leaves behind a face down skeletal frame.

Soundtrack
The soundtrack "The Dead Pool" was released in the album Mortal Kombat II: Music from the Arcade Game Soundtrack. It was composed by the Midway sound programmer Dan Forden. The song is still the same in Deception except it is an extended version.

Trivia

 * In MK II, holding the down button during the Stage Fatality will make the voice of Dan Forden say "Foul Ball". The soundbite plays automatically in the deathtrap of Deception.
 * Executionerconcepts.png were a few rumors concerning the Dead Pool, which mainly involved the chains hanging from the ceiling. One such was that it was possible to knock an opponent into the hooked ends, and that such chains acted as a mechanism to unlock something if body weight was applied to them. This rumor was included in Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks.
 * Unused sprites from the arcade version of Mortal Kombat II show that originally, the Dead Pool was to have an orange sky background behind the windows, much like the Portal and Kombat Tomb. In the SNES version of Mortal Kombat II, as well as the N64 version of Mortal Kombat Trilogy, the orange sky is present.
 * In Mortal Kombat Trilogy, the Shao Kahn Treasures that involve fighting somebody (i.e. Chameleon) are fought in the Dead Pool stage.
 * In MK (2011), ghostly screams can be faintly heard, moreso if the music volumem is turned down low enough.