Ermac

Ermac is a character in the Mortal Kombat fighting game franchise by Midway Games and NetherRealm Studios. Debuting as an unlockable character in Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 (1995), he is an amalgam of the souls of deceased warriors and possesses telekinetic abilities.

The character originated from rumors alleging he appeared in the original 1992 game as a glitch, which were perpetuated by video game magazine Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM). His name was derived from a diagnostics menu in the first game that displayed the text "error macro" as ERMACS. Although the rumors were false, growing interest led to him becoming an official playable character.

Ermac has additionally appeared in alternate series media including the animated series Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm and the web series Mortal Kombat: Legacy. He has received positive reception for his special abilities, character development, and Fatality finishing moves, while his origins are considered among the most memorable legends of video gaming.

History and conception
In the diagnostics menu of the 1992 original Mortal Kombat game, an audits screen displayed a macro created by Mortal Kombat co-creator and programmer Ed Boon in order to log coding errors. This practice was employed by series developer Midway Games since their 1990 arcade release Smash TV. It was spelled as ERMACS—a pluralized contraction of error macro—as in the number of times the program would execute. In early revisions of the game, it appeared on the audits screen beneath the counter "Shang Tsung Beaten" (in reference to the game's final boss fight). However, after Boon added the hidden character Reptile to the third revision, ERMACS was now listed below the counters "Reptile Appearances" and "Reptile Battles", which provoked players into searching for a second secret character called Ermac.

Midway removed the ERMACS listing from the game's fifth and final update in March 1993, but speculation about the character intensified after Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM) published a submitted screenshot from the game and a letter from "Tony Casey" that claimed he had played against a red ninja named Ermac and taken a Polaroid of the screen as evidence. Unbeknownst to the magazine, the photo was a doctored image of yellow ninja character Scorpion in the "Warrior Shrine" stage from the Super Nintendo version of the game that was tinted red with the added caption "Ermac Wins". Reader responses contained varied complex instructions for accessing the character. With the still-nonexistent Ermac now visualized as a red ninja, players then claimed sightings of a random glitch that would cause the game's ninja characters' graphics to flash red, with "Error Macro" or "Ermac" replacing their name in their energy bar, but such an occurrence was not possible as the macro counter could not increase in the event of a genuine glitch while no red palette for the character existed.

A scrambled message was included in the ending of the 1993 sequel Mortal Kombat II that read "Ermac does not exist", but neither Boon nor Midway marketing director Roger Sharpe denied outright the character's presence in the game. In October 1995, two years after the EGM incident, Ermac was added to the selectable roster of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 (an expansion of Mortal Kombat 3), as the developers felt that he had transformed from myth to urban legend and therefore warranted his inclusion in the series. In 2011, Boon clarified the rumors on Twitter, and said he had kept the meaning of the ERMACS listing secret in hopes of stirring up fan speculation about the character.

Midway inserted allusions to the rumors and EGM hoax in subsequent Mortal Kombat games and related media. Ermac appeared on one panel in a Mortal Kombat II comic book prequel that was written and illustrated by series co-creator John Tobias. Mortal Kombat: Deception's training mode contained a message that read, "It is a little-known fact that 'Ermac' is short for 'Error Macro'", an homage to his origins that was revived in Mortal Kombat X for a pre-match introduction sequence between Ermac and series newcomer Takeda. He was an Easter egg boss hidden at the Warrior Shrine level in Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, a 2005 beat 'em up spinoff title that spans the events of Mortal Kombat II. Skarlet, a nonexistent female ninja character from MKII with a similar background, was included by NetherRealm Studios (formerly Midway Games) as a playable character in the 2011 reboot game in what the company considered a second instance of turning fan rumors into reality.

Design and portrayal
Ermac was played by actor John Turk in the digitized games Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 and the 1996 compilation title Mortal Kombat Trilogy. As a palette-swapped character, he was physically identical to the Mortal Kombat games' other male ninjas, save for his red coloring and darker skin tone. For Mortal Kombat: Deception, which marked Ermac's return to the series as a playable character after an eight-year absence, he was given a distinct redesign by Steve Beran, the series' lead character designer and art director. Beran explained that his objective of remaking old characters was to greatly differentiate them from their previous incarnations. His Deception design was maintained for the 2011 reboot game, but with an increased black palette.

For Mortal Kombat X, Ermac was designed with a more emaciated appearance with his mask exposing more of his face and revealing decaying skin as the result of his losing control of the souls inside his body, with a metal talisman modeled after his chest design from Deception affixed to his chest in order to keep his physical form intact. The talisman initially covered his face, "securely nailed deep into the skull", in concept artwork by character artist Justin Murray. Early designs by Murray had Ermac unmasked with a stockier figure and solid black palette. Ermac's "Inner Workings" Fatality (a finishing move that executes defeated opponents) in the game has him levitate his opponent, break their spine in midair, and then telekinetically pull their gastrointestinal tract out from their mouth. The finisher was conceived by lead game designer John Edwards: "I remember sitting in the pitch meeting for it. People were like, 'That's hilarious and disgusting.' I'm pretty proud of it." The sound effects used to depict the graphic violence of his finishers were created with slime and a plunger.

Ermac first appears in Mortal Kombat 1 as a nonplayable character in the story mode and part of a "Kombat Pack" of six downloadable player characters that was first announced by NetherRealm Studios in July 2023, with him released to players in April 2024. His new design retains his black-and-red palette and ashen skin complexion from MKX but with minimal armor, and while Ermac was unmasked throughout the story mode, a trailer for his playable release featured him with a mask.

Gameplay
Ermac was one of three hidden unlockable characters in Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, and was the only player character who had not appeared in any previous series installments. As a palette swap, he had a standard projectile attack while sharing a teleport punch and uppercut-decapitation Fatality used by other characters. His signature special move is the "Telekinetic Slam" (later renamed "Force Lift"), which has him levitate his opponents and then throw them onto the ground. Ed Boon considered Ermac one of the strongest characters in UMK3 based on the maneuver, and GamePro opined that it was best used on downed opponents. The staff of BradyGames considered Ermac a "great choice for the advanced player" in MK Trilogy, but felt his offense was ineffective in close range and easily nullified with the block button.

His main fighting style in the three-dimensional games is Choy Lay Fut, a martial art that specializes, as depicted in his Deception ending, in warding off multiple attackers. GameSpy considered his combo (a timed succession of attacks) abilities "strong" in Deception, but his special moves less effective individually. In Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, Ermac is an unplayable boss hidden inside a statue at the Warrior Shrine level. GameFront's Mitchell Saltzman described Ermac in the 2011 series reboot as a novice-friendly character that experts could use to inflict heavy-damage combos. In Mortal Kombat X, Ermac's play style is split into three fighting variations like those of the game's other playable characters, and Bryan Dawson of Prima Games wrote that he was ideal for distance fighting and pressuring downed opponents.

Mortal Kombat games
Introduced in Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 (1995), Ermac was created to serve as an enforcer for Shao Kahn, the tyrannical ruler of the otherworldly dimension of Outworld. Ermac, a hybrid entity created from the souls of many deceased warriors, possesses telekinesis and uses plural pronouns. Following his creation, he takes part in Shao Kahn's invasion of Earthrealm and the eponymous Mortal Kombat tournament.

In Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance (2002), following Shao Kahn's apparent death at the hands of the titular alliance of evil sorcerers Shang Tsung and Quan Chi, Ermac aimlessly wanders Outworld without orders until he encounters the blind swordsman Kenshi who frees Ermac from Kahn's control, and Ermac hones Kenshi's telekinetic power in return. In Mortal Kombat: Deception (2004), Ermac reforms to atone for his work with Kahn by aiding the spirit of the deceased Liu Kang in successfully freeing the latter's friends from their enslavement by the Dragon King Onaga. In the opening of Mortal Kombat: Armageddon (2006), Ermac joins Earthrealm's warriors in participating in a battle to claim the elemental Blaze's godlike power.

After Earthrealm defender Raiden alters the timeline to avert the events of Armageddon in the reboot title Mortal Kombat (2011), Ermac returns to being Shao Kahn's enforcer, and is defeated in the first Mortal Kombat tournament by eventual champion Liu Kang. He obliterates Jax's arms, causing Jax to receive bionic implants. His ending reveals that one of the souls trapped inside his being is that of King Jerrod, Kitana's father and former ruler of Edenia. In Mortal Kombat X (2015), following Shao Kahn's death, Ermac initially serves the former's successor, Mileena, before defecting to Kotal Kahn due to Mileena not being Shao Kahn's biological daughter. He joins Reptile, Erron Black, and Ferra/Torr in serving Kotal Kahn as they conflict with Cassie Cage's Special Forces unit in their attempt to protect Outworld from Shinnok's forces.

In the rebooted storyline of Mortal Kombat 1 (2023), Ermac is again an assimilation of souls, now created by Quan Chi. He overpowers a group of Earthrealm defenders upon his completion but is weakened after Kenshi absorbs several of the souls into his sword to unleash its power, leading to his defeat by Ashrah. His later defeat in combat by Mileena enables Jerrod's soul to assume control of Ermac's body, and he reunites with his former queen Sindel and family before joining the fight to protect Earthrealm and Outworld. After Sindel is slain during battle with Shang Tsung's forces, Jerrod absorbs her soul and appoints his daughter Mileena as the new Outworld empress.

Other appearances


Ermac appeared in two episodes of the 1996 animated series Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm. He has a minor role as one of Shao Kahn’s henchmen in the 1997 feature film Mortal Kombat Annihilation, played by assistant stunt coordinator John Medlen and identified only in the closing credits, and though the script and print media publications mentioned his telekinetic powers, they were omitted from the film.

His association with Kenshi in Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance was loosely adapted for the 2013 second season of the web series Mortal Kombat: Legacy, in which he is a decaying, hooded demon who guards the "sword of Sento" under Shao Kahn's orders and strikes Kenshi blind as the latter takes the sword. Ermac then battles Kenshi in the Mortal Kombat tournament in an attempt to repossess the sword before Kenshi kills him with it. He was played by stuntman and martial artist Kim Do Nguyen, with his makeup designed by Christien Tinsley.

Ermac appears in the Mortal Kombat Annihilation novelization, and in DC Comics' 2015 Mortal Kombat X comic miniseries that is set before the events of the game. The character has been licensed for action figures, a life-sized standee, and an eighteen-inch limited-edition polystone statue.

Reception
Ermac's origins as a glitch and rumored character are considered among the most memorable urban legends in video games. GamesRadar+ executive editor Eric Bratcher credited the Electronic Gaming Monthly hoax with Ermac's addition to the Mortal Kombat series, while Rudie Obias of Mental Floss and Yannick LeJacq of Kotaku considered it the result of fans' enthusiasm for the character. Steve Watts of 1Up.com wrote in 2011 that supposed video game glitches like Ermac "go on to live as legends until the creators have no choice but to make it a reality." The staff of GameTrailers unsuccessfully attempted to access Ermac in the first game, per the reader instructions published in EGM, in an episode of their PopFiction web series that premiered at PAX Prime 2012. In his 2019 study Immersion and Worldbuilding in Videogames, Edin Omeragiċ of the University of Osijek stated that Ermac's inclusion was "especially immersive for the way it includes end users into the process, with developers seemingly relinquishing control over their world for a moment and making their fans feel as if they also had a hand in its creation."

Reception to his designs and gameplay have varied over the course of his series appearances. Though he and Mortal Kombat's other male ninjas made GamePro's 2009 list of the seventeen best palette-swapped video game characters, Dan Ryckert of Game Informer wrote in 2010 that he did not want these characters, aside from Scorpion and Sub-Zero, in future series installments, while Jeff Gerstmann of GameSpot felt the unlocking of Ermac in Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 was "a hassle". In his 2022 book Mortal Kombat: Games of Death, David Church remarked that when Ermac and other hidden characters became playable in "completist" titles like UMK3 and Mortal Kombat Trilogy, "their gameplay abilities were often poorly balanced and their backstories seem[ed] tacked onto the increasingly sprawling story world." Following his redesigns and roles in Deception and thereafter, Ermac received positive reception for his development, and was rated by gaming media outlets among the top series characters. GamesRadar+ commented in 2014: "This red-clad ninja might not be as iconic as Sub-Zero or Scorpion, but it's hard not to love Ermac for his ... supernatural, Sith-like powers of telekinesis." Gavin Jasper of Den of Geek, in 2015, noted the character's transformation from "just an altered Scorpion/Sub-Zero sprite with a lazily-animated psychic attack" to "a floating phantom, surrounded by souls and completely unpredictable. It just goes to show that even the lamest character can be fixed with a good hook." He additionally commented on Ermac's growth in Deception, "where he broke the bonds of [Shao] Kahn ... They [Midway] also made him powerful enough to take on Kung Lao, Kitana, Jax, Sonya, and Johnny Cage all by himself." In 2019, sociology professor Ricardo Cortez Lopes published an analysis of the modifications of the Deception version of Ermac in player-created Mugen game adaptations, and theorized that they influenced NetherRealm Studios' future iterations of the character. Ermac's initial Mortal Kombat 1 design revealed in July 2023 received heavy fan criticism due to the omission of his mask, which resulted in NetherRealm adding it to his redesign for his April 2024 playable release.

Ermac's finishing moves have met with critical praise,  particularly his "Pest Control" Fatality from the 2011 Mortal Kombat reboot, in which he shrinks his opponent and crushes them underfoot. When NetherRealm Studios posted a trailer of the "Inner Workings" Fatality from Mortal Kombat X on YouTube in March 2015, it accumulated over 850,000 views in less than a month, and garnered attention for its graphic content. Chicago Reader spotlighted the finisher in an April 2015 article titled "Has Mortal Kombat Finally Gone Too Far?", describing it as "an act of medieval torture as imagined by Tolkien." Justin Clark of GameSpot wrote in 2022 that the Fatality "might actually be the most shocking, gory, and disgusting act of surreal horror to ever happen in a video game, let alone the Mortal Kombat series".

Response to his alternate-media incarnations has been negative. Nathan Birch of Uproxx described him in Mortal Kombat Annihilation as a "forgettable red Scorpion clone" and his fight scene with Sonya in the film as "nondescript". Carl Lyon of Fearnet censured the character's design in Mortal Kombat: Legacy and his role therein as having "little development outside of an opponent ... that gets quickly dispatched", and while Gavin Jasper of Den of Geek noted Ermac's "pretty sweet fight scene" with Kenshi, he was also critical of his role in the storyline.