Peter Weller Returns as RoboCop for Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath

Fighting game old and busted: Dead or Alive 6.

Fighting game new hotness: “Dead or alive, you are coming with me.”

NetherRealm Studios’ Mortal Kombat 11 is going to be upgraded to Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath on May 26. There are a lot of neat things that will come with this DLC, such as a new cinematic storyline, new stages, the return of Friendships, and a handful of new characters. Characters like Sheeva the Shokan warrior queen and Fujin, God of Wind.

The biggest news is that those two will be joined by RoboCop. Yes, the protector of future Detroit and occasional alter ego of Colonel Sanders is on his way to Mortal Kombat.

I’ll buy that for a dollar! Or forty of them, since that’s the going price for the upgrade.

What’s especially sweet about this is that they got Peter Weller to voice the character! I’m already way too excited to get to see Weller-voiced RoboCop banter with Keith David-voiced Spawn.

This would be RoboCop’s first appearance in a fighting game. Though we did almost come close-ish with ClayFighter 63 1/3, which was going to include a parody of RoboCop until the developers decided it was in bad taste. Sadly, HoboCop was left on the cutting room floor.

For those who haven’t seen the classic 1987 action movie, RoboCop is Officer Alex Murphy. After being shot to kingdom come by master criminal Clarence Boddicker and his goons, Murphy was experimented on by corporate overlords OCP and turned into an unstoppable cyborg Frankenstein marketed to the public as RoboCop. While living only to protect and serve, RoboCop gradually regained his memories and humanity while making sure to bring his killers to justice.

After that, he had two iffy sequels, a couple cartoons, some comics, video games, and a TV series where he fought a superhero played by “Rowdy” Roddy Piper. He also saved Sting from the Four Horsemen at a WCW PPV. Then there was a reboot but nobody talks about it because it was “just fine, I guess” and that’s no way to make a remake of freaking RoboCop.

It’s those comics that bring up one of the most interesting wrinkles of RoboCop’s inclusion in Mortal Kombat 11. Back in 1992, Frank Miller and Walt Simonson brought us RoboCop vs. Terminator for Dark Horse Comics. The miniseries, based on the idea of RoboCop’s existence inadvertently teaching SkyNet how to be self-aware and causing Judgment Day, was absolutely rad and led to a video game adaptation.

There was another crossover called Terminator/RoboCop: Kill Human by Dynamite Entertainment, but that one was complete garbage and shouldn’t be read. Though now that I think about it, that comic has RoboCop go back in time and screw things up royally, which means that he and Raiden have more in common than I ever realized.

Now we’ll get to see these longtime cybernetic rivals square up again in the battlefields of Outworld, since the Terminator was recently released as DLC. It’s pretty funny how the guest character concept has brought us three of the big cinematic crossover rivalries in Mortal Kombat. Freddy Krueger showed up in Mortal Kombat 9 and Jason Voorhees appeared in Mortal Kombat X. Mortal Kombat X also gave us both the Predator and the Alien Xenomorph. I swear, Mortal Kombat 12 is going to somehow find a way to include King Kong and Godzilla.

We still don’t know how RoboCop is going to look in action. Despite being tough as a tank, he’s known for moving incredibly stiff in action and not having much in terms of a fighting style. What’s certain is that his wrist spike will definitely come into play and maybe he’ll have a Fatality based around dousing his enemy in toxic waste and running them over in a car.

I was going to make a joke about Johnny Cage bringing crotch-punching fists to a crotch-shooting gunfight, but now I’m curious how the split punch is even supposed to work against RoboCop.