The Elder Gods were pretty useless in bothMortal Kombattimelines. In the original trilogy, they kinda just sat back and allowed Shao Kahn to decimate entire civilizations, even invading Earthrealm despite losing the Mortal Kombat tournament. When they do get off their asses to do something, it’s usually already too late. And that’s not to get into the whole Shinnok ordeal. Long story short, they drop the ball a lot.

Liu Kang, however, is a very forgiving man. In theMortal Kombat 1beta test, players have found a reference to the Elder Gods, proving that Liu Kang decided to keep them around in his new timeline. This is despite them being responsible for much of the chaos that took place in the previous timeline when he was a defender of Earthrealm. Hell, one of them even sided with Kronika, so the implications here are pretty wild.

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As you can see in the screenshot below, the reference appears to come in when Liu Kang pulls off the brutality. Here, he says, “Elder Gods forgive me”, confirming their existence in the rebooted Mortal Kombat 1 timeline.

This could mean that the Elder Gods will play a role in the main story. In fact, now that we know that they’re canon, it’s hard to see how they won’t. Liu Kang has shaped this new timeline, so he could have made them a lot more useful - yet the line suggests he is still below them, so he’s not the most important deity around.

This version of Liu Kang isn’t above forgiving old enemies too.We already know that Geras is backand on his side. This is despite his aiding Kronika inMortal Kombat 11, so we could see Shinnok and Cetrion return too, in very different roles this time.

Of course, neither has been confirmed yet. But there will be DLC character packs and even asingle-player modewhere they could be referenced. So far, Mortal Kombat 1 is full of references and new takes on the previous games, so we can’t rule anything out right now.

We also have Gamescom Opening Night Live next Tuesday, in which Mortal Kombat 1 has already been confirmed to appear. So far, pretty much every new trailer has revealed new fighters, so who knows? Maybe references like this were shoved into the weekend beta to tease us for the Tuesday reveal. Either that or maybe we’llfinallyget some news on Jade and Sonya’s potential places on the roster, becausefans have been begging for that for weeks.

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