Rain (Mortal Kombat)
Rain is a fictional character in the Mortal Kombat fighting game franchise by NetherRealm Studios/Midway Games. He was created by series programmer Ed Boon as a palette-swapped joke red herring inserted into Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 in order to stir up fan interest in the game, he became a playable character in the follow-up title Mortal Kombat Trilogy. In the games, Rain is from the fictional realm of Edenia like Kitana and Jade, but he does not share his compatriots' allegiance to their homeland and instead opts to serve evil Outworld emperor Shao Kahn. He plays his most prominent role in , where he is revealed to be a demigod and related to the protagonist of the game's storyline.
Rain has been playable only in MK: Armageddon and the compilation game Mortal Kombat Trilogy in addition to the 2011 Mortal Kombat reboot, for which he was a later addition as downloadable content. He has otherwise had minor appearances in the story and training modes of other series releases. General critical reception to the character has been mixed.
History and creation
Rain makes his first appearance in the Mortal Kombat series in the attract mode of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, in which he attacks Shao Kahn on the Portal stage. Similar to Ermac in the first Mortal Kombat, players attempted to hunt him down to no avail, and speculation regarding his existence was spurred by a cryptic message inserted by the developers that read "Rain can be found in the Graveyard", in reference to a stage in the game where the character was never actually seen.Mortal Kombat co-creator Ed Boon explained in 2011 that Rain's conception "was me being a jerk, basically." A fan of Prince, Boon's inspiration for the character was the 1984 track Purple Rain, coupled with his jokingly wondering what color palette had not yet been used in the games. By the time Boon had decided to include Rain as a selectable in UMK3, the game was already completed, which caused him to hack into the attract mode to insert a snippet of the character as an unplayable red herring who was a purple palette swap of Scorpion, and created his name from scratch to display in his power bar, thus it is the only one in the game that is not italicized.
Rain was made a playable character with his own backstory and distinct set of moves for the home versions of UMK3 and the 1996 home-release compilation title Mortal Kombat Trilogy, the latter which was to actually include another new ninja character, Tremor, a brown palette swap who had been cut during the development process. The noncanonical biography that had been created for him was passed on to Rain instead and included in the game's instruction manual.
Appearances
In video games
As a child, Rain was smuggled away from his homeland of Edenia in the midst of the realm's takeover by Outworld emperor Shao Kahn, while his father stayed behind to perform his duties as general of Edenia's armies, but he was killed and his armies crushed in the invasion. Thousands of years later, during the events of MK Trilogy, Rain resurfaced during Kahn's invasion of Earthrealm prior to the third Mortal Kombat tournament, and was attacked by Kahn's extermination squads; not wanting to suffer at their hand, he elected to turn his back on his homeland and side with Kahn, who trained him as an assassin alongside fellow Edenians Kitana and Jade before enlisting them in the fight against the Earth warriors. However, Kahn's would-be domination of Earthrealm is unsuccessful and Rain is absent from the series until the training mode of ', where he asks Shujinko to find a dagger belonging to Goro, which he in turn keeps for himself until he is knocked out by Jade.' marks Rain's return as a playable character after a decade, as he is selectable along with the series' then-entire roster. As one of only seventeen characters in the game to receive an official biography, he plays his largest role in the original series continuity by learning of his true Edenian heritage from evil Outworld sorcerer Quan Chi, who informs Rain that he is a direct descendant of Argus, the protector god of Edenia, as well as the half-sibling of the game's protagonist Taven and his brother Daegon, both of whom were favored by their father to assume his mantle of Edenia's protectors. Rain consequently starts to refer to himself as a prince of the realm, as seen in Armageddon's training mode, but he still chooses to independently fight on the side of evil. He confronts Taven in the fictional location of Arctika but is defeated in battle and flees into a portal.
His storyline is altered in the 2011 Mortal Kombat reboot, which makes no mention of his father or siblings, instead describing him as having been orphaned at a young age by Kahn's conquest of Edenia and raised under the protection of Edenian resistance fighters. As he gained a reputation as an exceptional warrior, his level of arrogance followed suit, and when he was refused leadership of the resistance, he betrayed them to their sworn enemy. This caught the attention of Kahn, who offered the power-hungry Rain an army of his own in exchange for his services. However, in Rain's ending, Kahn had no intention of fulfilling his end of the bargain. Rain therefore kills him in combat and ends up saving Earthrealm in the process, for which he is thanked by Raiden, who also informs him that he is the son of Argus. Rain, consequently drunk with power to which he felt he was entitled, coupled with a sense of superiority from being the offspring of a god, takes over Kahn's armies to rule all realms, starting, to Raiden's horror, with Earthrealm.
Rain is not playable in Mortal Kombat X, but appears in the game's story mode. He serves as Mileena's advisor and tries to help her reclaim the Outworld throne from the warlord Kotal Kahn in the midst of a civil war. Rain plans to take the throne for himself when the war is over but is stopped by D'Vorah. He is featured in Tanya's noncanonical arcade ending, in which he and Tanya flee Kotal Kahn's forces in Outworld but are captured. She turns him over to Kahn in exchange for clemency, resulting in Rain being burned at the stake.
Design and gameplay
Rain was the tenth palette-swapped human ninja character introduced into the Mortal Kombat series. His offense drew on the power of weather as he was able to harness water and lightning, while he shared Reptile's victory pose and the stance for Ermac's Telekinetic Slam for his lightning strike, which caused opponents to bounce into the air and thus set them up for a juggle combo. His roundhouse kick was unique to the series as it sent opponents flying onto the opposite side of the screen, while his Animality turned him into a pygmy elephant that trumpets the skin off his opponent. Bryan Dawson of Prima Games named Rain in MK Trilogy as one of the series' "cheapest" characters, citing his specials therein that led to lengthy combos.For his reemergence in Armageddon, Rain was given a new, distinct identity like the other ninjas from the two-dimensional games, with less emphasis on purple for his uniform and more on black and gold, giving him a more regal appearance that now included a back-length cape, while he still concealed his identity behind a mask that itself was a standalone entity as he was now shown as having long, black hair tied up in a topknot. In his official Armageddon render, he is seen brandishing a pair of curved knives but never actually uses them in the game; instead, his weapon is a sword. He was given more water-based special moves for Armageddon and the 2011 Mortal Kombat reboot, the latter in which he was later added as a downloadable character.
In other media and merchandise
Rain made a one-episode appearance in the 1996 animated series ', and was voiced by Rino Romano. The character's live-media incarnations were portrayed by African-American actors. He was played by stuntman Tyrone Cortez Wiggins in a minor role in the 1997 film , in which he serves as the general of Shao Kahn's extermination squads but is killed by Kahn after sparing the lives of Kabal and Stryker after capturing them. Rain makes a brief appearance in one episode of the 1998 television series ' and is played by Percy "Spitfire" Brown. He has no dialogue and is sent by Kahn to kill Kung Lao before the next tournament, but is unsuccessful after being forced to flee when Taja intervenes.Rain was included as an "exclusive" in a "Klassic Ninja" six-pack of 4" action figures released in 2011 by Jazwares, while a polystone statue of the character was released by Syco Collectibles in 2012. In DC Comics' 2015 weekly Mortal Kombat X prequel miniseries, Rain debuts in the eighth chapter as he joins Reiko and Mileena in their war against Kotal Kahn, manipulating the weather to block out the sun and therefore deny Kahn his primary power source, but he is severely burned by Kahn in retaliation. He is not seen again until the twenty-first chapter, in which he is disfigured and recuperating under Mileena's care after being recovered by the Red Dragon clan. He informs Mileena of a conversation he overheard among Red Dragon clansmen regarding her former comrade Reiko's loyalty to Havik, resulting in Mileena planning an invasion of Shang Tsung's island to hunt down Reiko, Havik and the Red Dragon.
Reception
Rain is one of the Mortal Kombat series' more negatively received characters from the first generation of games, mainly due to his origins. Craig Skistimas of ScrewAttack rated him among the ten worst series characters, praising his roundhouse kick but stating, "No ninja should be named after a Prince song." Topless Robot, in 2009, ranked him fourth in their list "The 9 Most Pathetic Fighting Game Characters" for the same reasons, adding: "It's not that Rain is an untalented fighter. It's just that you can't help but feel like you've seen this guy somewhere before." Den of Geek's Gavin Jasper criticized Rain's UMK3 attract-mode appearance as "false advertising", but also ranked Rain 36th in his 2015 rating of the 64 series characters due to his MK2011 ending and the expansion of his backstory in Armageddon as "a power-hungry jerk who believed that he was owed everything." UGO ranked him 28th out of the series' top 50 characters in 2012. "Most Mortal Kombat characters don't get their start as an inside joke, but Rain proves to be a rare exception." Elijah Watson of Complex named Rain as one of the series' most brutal characters in 2013.Rain's "Upside Down Uppercut" Fatality from Trilogy, in which he punches his opponent apart into four separate segments that fly vertically offscreen and then drop back down to perfectly reform their upended corpse, placed on 1UP.com's list of Mortal Kombat's fifteen worst Fatalities and made Game Informer's selection of the series' seven worst finishers: "Rain was one of the many palette-swap clones in Mortal Kombat Trilogy, and he easily had the worst Fatality." His Animality tied with that of Scorpion as the eighth-worst Fatality in the series from GamePro. Gameranx rated his "Bubble Burst" Fatality from MK2011 as the series' third-most gruesome finisher, and Robert Workman of Prima Games ranked it 41st in his 2014 list of the series' fifty best Fatalities.