With a new installment in the Mortal Kombat movie series set for nationwide release in early May, now is an ideal time to revisit the franchise’s origins and the role it played in one of America’s early culture wars. What began in 1992 as an arcade fighting game quickly became a cultural flashpoint, igniting fierce debates about violence, censorship, and the influence of video games on youth. The game’s graphic fatalities and unapologetic gore sparked the first major salvo in the culture war over video game content, most notably by pitting Democrats like the late Senator Joe Lieberman against the burgeoning gaming industry in congressional hearings. 

My salad days were spent in video arcades, blasting hordes of zombies or trying to defeat M.Bison in Street Fighter II. But Mortal Kombat was the real draw. If you knew the right button combination, you could end your opponent with a signature, blood-soaked move. Giddy teenagers, myself included, would throng the machine to witness this unprecedented example of pixelated violence. As someone who grew up loving the films of Lucio Fulci and the special effects of Tom Savini, I was spellbound—the eerie sound of a human voice saying “fatality” and signaling your enemy was squashed into viscera. 

By the time of my 14^th birthday, I’d already cycled through home consoles—from the Atari 2600’s chunky joystick to the smooth 16-bit curves of the Super Nintendo. But this birthday was different. Mortal Monday—the global launch of Mortal Kombat for home consoles—happened to coincide with my birthday. That year, I unwrapped a Mortal Kombat cartridge for my Sega Mega Drive—a gift that felt almost mythic. After years of feeding coins into arcade machines, bringing that brutal spectacle into my own bedroom was electrifying. The previous year’s late nights were spent dashing through Sonic the Hedgehog, but now, like so many of my cohort, I was obsessed with mastering every killer combination Mortal Kombat had to offer. This obsession of my generation of young men did not sit well with a certain group of pearl-clutching politicians. 

On Dec. 9, 1993, Democratic Senators Joe Lieberman, Herbert Kohl, and Byron Dorgan held a congressional hearing on video game violence. Lieberman’s main goal was to establish a universal ratings system meant to keep violent games out of the hands of minors. In a display of collective Boomer indignation, Lieberman et al inveighed against Mortal Kombat’s brutality. The senator from Connecticut claimed the game taught children “to enjoy torture,”  describing the action of the game in this way: “the game narrator instructs the player to finish—and I quote, ‘finish’—his opponent. The player may then choose a method of murder, ranging from ripping the heart out to pulling off the head of the opponent with spinal cord attached.” Kohl argued these games tell kids that to win you must kill, a message he said “pollutes our society.” Bill White, Sega America’s Vice President, was grilled by Dorgan about why kids weren’t protected from this “trash.” The industry was issued an ultimatum: self-regulate or face federal intervention. 

Ultimately, Lieberman got his way with the formation of the Entertainment Software Rating Board, but in doing so, he kick-started a moral panic. Journalists were dispatched to arcades to interview kids playing the game, concerned psychologists were put in front of cameras, and machines were removed from arcades as far away as Europe, Brazil, and South Korea.

The moral panic over Mortal Kombat in early 1990s America closely resembled the feverish moral crusade against so-called “video nasties” in 1980s Britain. Back then, unrated videotapes flooded into the country, unleashing a torrent of graphic horror movies onto unsuspecting households. The Conservative government, led by that self-proclaimed guardian of Hayekian liberty, Margaret Thatcher, passed the 1984 Video Recordings Act, making it a crime to sell or distribute anything that lacked certification from the British Board of Classification. The result? Over 1,600 people were convicted, and cult classics like The Evil Dead vanished from video rental store shelves.

Newspapers seized the moment, their headlines brimming with sensationalized tales conflating the gruesome fiction on screen with real-world violence, blaming these films for a supposed wave of murders. The boundary between art and actual crime was deliberately blurred, stoking public fear. To appease the baying mob, the director of public prosecutions produced the infamous “video nasties” list of 72 banned movies, as if simply watching the wrong film could turn a citizen into a killer. 

When Mortal Kombat arrived in the ’90s, the media simply recycled this well-worn trope to frame the new digital threat “invading” the private realm. Newspapers framed the game’s realistic graphics as a new interactive form of the same “poison” they once attributed to banned films like Cannibal Holocaust and The Last House on the Left. 

So why the media frenzy? In 1993, violent crime was surging in America—just two days before the Senate hearing, a gunman killed six people on a crowded Long Island train during rush hour. Against this backdrop, video games became a convenient scapegoat, offering a simple explanation. However, a 2019 study published in the journal Royal Society Open Science found no link between video games and real-world violence. Even today, titles like Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto are still blamed for violent acts, despite evidence to the contrary.

It’s hilarious to think that a blocky, low-resolution 2D game caused such a fuss. Looking back, the infamous fatalities are more amusing than horrifying. The new Mortal Kombat film is bound to be as charmingly idiotic as the game, but at least we’re free to enjoy dumb, over-the-top, violent movies. For now.