to restart history for himself, only to discover that Liu Kang had manipulated events to ensure the sorcerer's victory over Kronika. The Fire God demands he turn over the Crown, but Shang Tsung refuses, resulting in a final battle between the two warriors. In the bad ending, Shang Tsung defeats Liu Kang and absorbs his godly power to conquer all of the realms. In the good ending, he is defeated by Liu Kang, who erases the sorcerer from existence. Character design and gameplay Shang Tsung (originally named "Shang Lao") was based on a "Chinese sorcerer" archetype from martial arts films, including but not limited to the character Lo Pan from the film Big Trouble in Little China. He was originally envisioned as the one who would behead the losing fighter, prior to the concept of character-specific Shang Fatalities. (Daniel Pesina remembers playing with Shang Tsung's "plastic katana" and the sword-swinging animation might even be buried within the game files.) A cut character named "Kitsune", which was later developed into Kitana, "was going to fit into the story as Shang Lao’s (Tsung's) princess daughter - the spoil of victory for winning the tournament", who would betray her father after she fell for Liu Kang. The original idea was that Shang Tsung was a human traitor who had sold his soul. Mortal Kombat art director Herman Sanchez said that as the series progressed he decided to emphasize Tsung's air of "sinister regality." Shang Tsung's design varies throughout the series. The initial history of the character was explained in the 1992 Midway-produced comic book based on the original MK game, in which he was the first-ever Mortal Kombat (then the Shaolin Tournament) champion over 500 years ago from the date of the then-current tournament depicted in the actual game, yet he was stricken with a curse that forced him to consume the souls of his defeated opponents in order to keep his youth. The book cited his "failure to appease the gods" as the reason for his premature aging to a withered old man, but he was noticeably younger in Mortal Kombat II, in which Shao Kahn had restored Shang Tsung's youth and powers as part of his plan to take over Earthrealm by luring Liu Kang and his fellow Earth warriors into Outworld for the next MK tournament. His actor in the sequel changed to Phillip Ahn, turning from the original game's