After a shaky few years in the early days of 3D graphics, the Mortal Kombat franchise has carved out its own space in the fighting game market with a number of glossy, gory and most of all, highly enjoyable titles. Coming next is, of course, Mortal Kombat 11, which looks like it’s going to be the best outing in the series to date as it aims to offer us all the bone-crunchin,’ blood-spurtin,’ face-tearin’ action we all secretly crave.
But there’s something else we’ve been craving, too, and that’s the addition of one character in particular. Over the last few years, we’ve seen a whole host of great guest stars, with Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, Leatherface, a Predator and the Alien all arriving to square off against the Kombat cast. And each of them has put up more than enough of a match for the franchise’s crew of supernaturally powered ninjas, otherworldly mutants and low level deities.
However, we’ve yet to see Shaggy from Scooby-Doo make his way into the arena, and as absurd as the idea may sound, it’s found itself with an overwhelming amount of support in recent weeks. In fact, a petition to include the character recently passed 300,000 signatures. That, combined with the fact that Warner Bros. owns both Scooby-Doo and Mortal Kombat would lead one to think that it’d be pretty easy to make this happen. But unfortunately, our hopes have just been dashed.
Earlier today, NetherRealm’s community manager Tyler Lansdown revealed that the developer has decided not to include Shaggy.
“Shaggy will not be in the game,” Lansdown said. “At all. Ever. Sorry, dead meme. No Shaggy in Mortal Kombat 11.”
It doesn’t get much more final than that, and though he wouldn’t say why they decided against adding him in, this is definitely a crushing blow to all those who were hoping to get to see what kind of craziness they’d cook up for Shaggy’s fatalities. Perhaps the Mystery Machine would grind his foes to a pulp? Or maybe he’d have Scooby chowing down on someone’s head like a big Scooby snack? Unfortunately, we’ll never know.
Still, there’s a lot to look forward to with the game and with Mortal Kombat 11 approaching its April 26th release date, you can expect to learn additional information about the characters that will be playable sooner rather than later.