Mortal Kombat is a best-selling series of fighting games created by Ed Boon and John Tobias in 1992. Mortal Kombat began as a series of arcade games, which were picked up by Acclaim Entertainment for the home console (video game console) versions. Then Midway Games exclusively created home versions of Mortal Kombat. The series was then sold to Warner Bros. in July 2009.

It is especially noted for its digitized sprites (Sprite (computer graphics)) (which differentiated it from its contemporaries hand-drawn sprites), and its high levels of blood and gore, including, most notably, its graphic fatalities (Fatality (Mortal Kombat))?finishing moves, requiring a sequence of buttons to perform, which, in part, led to the creation of the ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board). The series itself is also known for using the letter "K" in place of "C" for the hard C (voiceless velar plosive) sound, thus misspelling the word "combat," as well as other words with the hard C sound within later games in the series.