Goro

The four-armed Shokan prince who held the tournament title for 500 years.

Goro is the sub-boss of the first Mortal Kombat game (1992). He is a Shokan, a half-human, half-dragon race marked by four arms and enormous size. After defeating the Great Kung Lao he became Grand Champion of the tournament and kept the title for 500 years, as part of Shang Tsung's plan to win Earthrealm for Outworld's emperor Shao Kahn.

Lore & Background

Liu Kang ended that plan by defeating both Goro and Shang Tsung, and Goro vanished and was believed dead. Another Shokan, Kintaro, took his place in Mortal Kombat II, and Goro did not return until the 1996 compilation Mortal Kombat Trilogy. In Deadly Alliance's training mode he is mortally wounded; in Deception Shao Kahn saves him in return for his loyalty, promising to restore the Shokan and banish their enemies the Centaurs. The 2011 reboot again makes him the sub-boss of the Shaolin Tournament, beaten by Liu Kang. He was a pre-order fighter in Mortal Kombat X, his corpse appears in Mortal Kombat 11, and in Mortal Kombat 1 he is a Kameo Fighter and a soldier in General Shao's army.

Reader's Guide

Goro began as a two-armed demon warrior called Rokuro. Ed Boon and John Tobias gave him four arms after Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion films, especially the Kali figure in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, and he was first named Gongoro. He was animated from a stop-motion clay model that fell apart from use. In the 1995 film he was a life-size animatronic that cost over $1 million and needed more than a dozen puppeteers.