Hold block, and press forward, duck, back, up and forward.
'Cause we're exploring the cute, cuddly world of MORTAL KOMBAT!
(Mortal Kombat theme song)
Hello, Internet. Welcome to Game Theory. You know the drill.
In three episodes, we've looked at three older games.
And last week did get a little touchy feely
So let's get current and let's get gory.
To celebrate the recent release of MK9,
we're looking at some of the many painful ways to die
in the Mortal Kombat universe.
First, let's start with a classic: The Human Hand Heart Extraction.
Kano's move from the original Mortal Kombat
isn't just a memorable gaming scene. It's a staple movie moment, most famously from The Temple of Doom
And, yes, to answer the question before it's even asked.
Ripping out still beating hearts does have its place in history.
With the Aztecs, the People of the Sun.
Between the 14th and 16th centuries, before the Spaniards arrived in Mexico,
the Aztecs were a thriving culture with a rich, religious life in Mesoamerica.
They believed, as told in The Legend of the Five Suns,
that all gods have sacrificed themselves so man could live.
To them, a continual sacrifice sustained the universe, with the most common form being the extraction of the heart, which they believed to possess a fragment of the Sun's heat.
By extracting the heart, this fragment was freed and returned to the Sun.
One of the two principal deities of the Aztec religion was Huitzilopochtli, the God of the Sun and the Zenith and also the God of War.
With a flint knife, one incision was made, and then the heart was ripped out, still beating and held up to the sky in Huitzilopochtli's honor.
But wait! There's more!
Though cremation normally followed, sometimes the body would be used in a ritualistic act of cannibalism.
Not even Mortal Kombat took it there.
But, then again, that was almost twenty years ago, and we've come a long way since then.
Speaking of removing organs, let's talk about a human's largest one: the skin.
In the newest, ninth, installment of the series, Sheeva has a nifty little fatality where she rips the skin clean off her opponent's body in two pieces.
However, in this case, truth is stranger than fiction.
Not only is peeling the skin away from muscle possible, but the Aztecs (yes, them again) could do Sheeva one better by pulling it off in one clean sheet.
After their...careful extraction of the heart, some sacrificial victims would also have their flesh ripped off as a sacrifice to the god Xipe Totec,
who is said to have given his own flesh so that humanity could have food.
Statues depicting Xipe look like a brainstorming session for Silence of the Lambs, complete with a fleshy mask and a pair of arms hanging at his side.
To honor him, Aztec priests would wear the freshly cut skin garments for twenty days, beginning on the Spring Equinox.
Removing it at the end of this period symbolized a renewal of the seasons, much like a snake losing its skin.
Sheeva may not wear much, but even she didn't go this far.
While we're chatting about the women of MK, let's talk about kissing.
Kissing TO THE DEATH.
Both Sonya Blade and Kitana have fatalities brought on by a kiss.
But aside from a cold sore, mono, or an angry girlfriend, what harm can kissing do in real life?
It's not like there's a such thing as a Kiss of Death, is there?
WRONG
The Kiss of Death actually refers to the bite of the Reduviid bug, or Kissing Bug, of Mexico and South America, which sucks blood out of a human's lips when he's asleep.
After feeding, the bug poops, (pardon my language) leaving behind fecal matter contaminated with the parasite Typanosoma Cruzi,
which causes Chagas Disease, a disease affecting all vital organs that is linked to some 50,000 deaths a year.
Some symptoms? Swelling and vomiting.
Explosions producing three or more ribcages are...rare.
The Kiss of Death was also a nickname for a small pistol hidden inside a lipstick tube, used by the KGB during The Cold War.
But, none of these things are like the kisses in the game.
Is there anything closer?
Well, maybe.
In my research, everyone kept repeating this exact line.
But nowhere was I able to find any hard evidence supporting this.
Instead, it seems that they were confusing a purposeful use of poisonous ingredients in lipstick
with an accidental uses of ingredients that were found to be poisonous years later.
Like the ancient Egyptians using Fucus-Algin, a reddish-purple mercurish plant dye.
And even today, many bright red lipsticks contain trace amounts of the poisonous element lead.
So, what's the verdict on Kisses of Death?
I say, go forth and kiss as you please!
Speaking of swapping spit, what type of reptile is Reptile?
Are there any human sized, acid-spitting lizards we should be careful of?
Well, there are though to be only two poisonous lizards: The Gila monster and the Mexican bearded lizard.
But both inject their toxins through biting, not spitting, so that rules them out.
But that's not the end of the story.
Komodo dragons, the largest living species of lizard, have a buildup of septic bacteria in their mouths because of their diet of dead animals.
So, even though they don't spit to burn off people's faces, they could if they wanted to.
Add to that the fact that they can grow up to 9.8 feet long, and are known to stand on their hind legs in battle over females during the mating season
and you have a pretty good candidate for the reptile behind the mask.
Let's FINISH THIS!
by looking at one of two guys that made this series famous: Sub-Zero.
When it comes to gameplay, freezing people and shattering their bodies into thousand pieces is his modus operandi.
But, could a Sub-Zero ninja really do this in real life?
The answer is a resounding YES.
Since our bodies are 50-65% water, dropping our core temperature enough would practically make us into human popsicles.
So let's TURN DOWN THE HEAT and see what happens
At 86° F, your body enters a state called Metabolic Icebox.
You'll look dead and you won't move, but you'll still be alive.
That is, until 68 degrees, when you heart finally stops.
But to be cold enough to actually break off a body part, you would have to get the body down to 28° F.
Literally freezing your balls off.
Considering that liquid nitrogen is around -321° F, this doesn't seem so implausible after all.
In fact, Sub-Zero isn't the only one making a living off of shattering human ice sculptures.
Promesa Organic, a company in Sweden, specializes in eco-friendly burials, where a body is frozen, submerged in liquid nitrogen, then reduced to a powder using soundwaves.
And that's anything but toasty.
And now it's time for my final thought.
I'll keep it brief.
We've seen a lot of horrendous ways to die today.
So what's the take home message?
What have we really learned? Only this:
Stay away from Aztecs, 'cause they're [beep] crazy!
That's really all I got.
But hey, that's just a theory. A Game Theory.
Thanks for watching.