Ermac is a fictional 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 either a glitch or a hidden character, 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 appeared in other Mortal Kombat media such as 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 that had been created by Mortal Kombat co-creator and programmer Ed Boon in order to catch coding errors. This practice had been 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 a counter titled "Shang Tsung Beaten" (in reference to the game's final boss fight). However, when Boon added the hidden character Reptile into the third revision, ERMACS was listed on the menu 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 first Mortal Kombat 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 a victory pose on the "Warrior Shrine" stage from the Super Nintendo version of the game, tinted red and