Board Thread:General MK Discussion/@comment-25163804-20150920130814

Doctor Who reference aside, I wrote a comment on The Ideal Mortal Kombat 11 thread (Thread:96813) and as I was writing, I came to talk about how time works in the Mortal Kombat universe... and now have a pathological need to write about how it works in the Mortal Kombat 'universe', which I'll get to in a minute.

But first, what exactly happened to cause this pile of gobbelty gook? In the very beginning minute of Mortal Kombat 9, Raiden sends a message to his 'past self', saying the now-infamous line 'He Must Win'. Once Past-Raiden gets this message, shit starts to change as Raiden actively tries to change time, and it just gets all kinds of messy.

But, no time travel actually occured. In what would be conventionally considered the 'Bootstrap Paradox', Future Raiden would have sent information to a past copy that would not have existed, thus providing information without origin. This would be an unsolvable puzzle... ... ... if time worked in one stream.

In something that would surprise no one who's been on the wiki for more than 30 seconds and wasn't



blindly clicking like a nervous wreck trying to find NSFW Jade things, there are two timelines in the Mortal Kombat 'Universe', split right at Mortal Kombat 1. But, they have similarities, as both timelines have been affected by past events before MK1. Liu Kang was born before MK1, so he is around in both timelines. The best way to visualize this is like a slingshot or tuning fork. There is a core handle that is one thing, then at a critical point, it splits in two. In my very quickly-made model, black shows pre-split events, Red shows what I call the 'Midway' timeline, as all events in this timeline take place when NetherRealm was still Midway, and Cyan is the 'NetherRealm' timeline, named after the company's new name. The purple spot in the middle is the 'split' or 'event' that triggers the creation of the new timeline; The vision sent to Raiden. Because time works in two streams, there is no Bootstrap Paradox, as a whole new timeline was created.

But, hold on a minute. Something's amiss. If there's two different timelines, then would that mean there are two Mortal Kombat Universes? Technically, you wouldn't be wrong in thinking that. According to the Multiverse theory, there are an infinite amount of universes, some slightly different from each other, and others drastic. For instance; in an alternate universe to our own, the difference could be as subtle as Mortal Kombat being spelt with a C instead of with a K, or as drastic as the admins of this Wiki being Robert Downey Jr., Kevin Conroy, Troy Baker and Ronda Rousey. But, I'm sure most of you already knew that, and might be curious as to what that might have to do with this timeline that is MK. Well, in order to not only avoid the bootstrap paradox but also have all of the events unfold in the new timeline without too many problems, Raiden would have, in essence, created a parallel universe to the Midway timeline, one where events can be drastically different from the original without paradoxes.



In theory, it would be possible for this kind of time travel to create as many branches as NRS would want; maybe a branch happening further back than MK1 would result in Raiden being banished to the NetherRealm and Shinnok being the protector of Earthrealm, or perhaps instead a branch in the NetherRealm Timeline could exist where Sindel wasn't an overpowered banshee bitch. These different timelines woudl branch off from the timeline being altered at that specific point, creating the possibility for endless different timelines.

Of course, that would mean that the Midway timeline is still doomed as Midway Raiden didn't end up changing shit in his timeline, which could be a good thing in the long run as there's still a timeline. The problem quickly arises when timelines cross over. In order to be more 'traditional' time travel problems (a la Back To The Future) there'd need to be an overlap, or a cross-over. Say, for example,



Onaga creates a hole in time connecting MK: Deception with Mortal Kombat X. Suddenly, the paradoxes would come flying at everyone, and while that's the only way that time travel would work inthe Mortal Kombat Multiverse without creating an entirely new timeline (because, remember, time in Mortal Kombat seems to work in the infintely branching means, as I've discussed before), this kind of time travel would provide all kinds of problems. Paradoxes on top of Paradoxes; Conundrums on top of Conundrums! This sort of time travel should not happen in MK, for our sanity.

Hope you enjoyed my no-sleep analysis on how time works in MK. :)

- WraithBlade115 