Fatality is the name given to a gameplay feature in the Mortal Kombat series of fighting video games, in which the victor of the final round in a match inflicts a brutal and gruesome finishing move onto their defeated opponent. Prompted by the announcer saying "Finish Him/Her", players have a short time window to execute a Fatality by entering a specific button and joystick combination, while positioned at a specific distance from the opponent. The Fatality and its derivations are arguably the most notable features of the Mortal Kombat series and have caused a large cultural impact and controversies. Conception The origins of the Fatality concept has been traced back to several violent Asian martial arts media. In The Street Fighter (1974), a Japanese martial arts grindhouse film, Sonny Chiba performs x-ray fatality finishing moves, which at the time was seen as a gimmick to distinguish it from other martial arts films. In the Japanese shōnen manga and anime series Fist of the North Star (1983 debut), the protagonist Kenshiro performs gory fatalities in the form of finishing moves which consist of attacking pressure points that cause heads and bodies to explode, anticipating the fatalities of Mortal Kombat. The Japanese seinen manga and anime series Riki-Oh (1988 debut), along with its Hong Kong martial arts film adaptation Story of Ricky (1991), featured gory fatalities in the form of finishing moves similar to those that later appeared in Mortal Kombat. The 1987 fighting game Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior had also featured blood and beheadings. While creating Mortal Kombat, Ed Boon and John Tobias started with the idea of Street Fighter II style system and retained many of its conventions but tweaked others. The most notable additions were graphic blood effects, more brutal fighting techniques, and especially the fatal finishing moves (this was a novelty as the traditional fighting games ended with the loser simply knocked unconscious and the victor posing for the players). According to Boon, it started with an idea to enable the player to hit a dizzied opponent at the end of the match with a "free hit", and that idea "quickly evolved into something nasty." Tobias recalled it differently: "Our first idea was to use them as a finishing move for final boss Shang Tsung, who was going to pull out his sword and behead his opponent. Then we thought, 'What if the player could do that to