Mortal Kombat X leaked images confirm that Kano will return as a playable character

Last week Creative Director Ed Boon revealed that some sort of Mortal Kombat X related announcement will be made at Gamescom. We speculated back then that this announcement might come in the form of a new character unveiling, just as NetherRealm did with Raiden back at EVO 2014. Well, it seems this will indeed be the case, at least according to some recently leaked images. The pictures reportedly come straight from a German gaming magazine and have first surfaced on Twitter. Most of you will most likely recognize this fighter if you’ve played any of the previous MK titles. If not, know that his name is Kano and he’s been around since 1992.

Kano in MKX #KANO #MORTALKOMBAT #MKX pic.twitter.com/uFjjXBVgDm

— Ryan (@westkoastkilla) August 3, 2014

Kano has been featured multiple times throughout the games and has also appeared in the 1995 movie, as well as the 2011 webseries Mortal Kombat Legacy. He is one of the most notorious thugs and criminals in the whole Mortal Kombat universe and is generally seen as a bad guy. This usually puts him at odds with more lawful characters such as Sonya Blade  and Jax Briggs among others. We have no idea if these fighters will also be present in Mortal Kombat X, but we do know that Cassie Cage – Sony Blade’s and Johnny Cage’s daughter – will be part of the line-up. We assume she will be especially interested in taking down Kano, just as her mother has been for all these years. It’s hard to say if she will actually succeed though. Sonya has been hunting down Kano for the longest time but he is still alive and kicking apparently.

However, the leaked images don’t depict him battling his traditional foes, instead he is seen going up against one of the four original Mortal Kombat X characters, the Sun God Kotal Khan. The picture suggests that one of Kano’s three variants will revolve around the use of wrestling moves, and one of these moves will be the Flying Knee attack. The other image just shows him presumably threatening or thrash talking to Kotal Khan right before their battle. Normally I would advise you to take these images with a grain of salt, but they do look pretty genuine if you ask me. The German magazine probably got a little bit too excited and showed him before the official Gamescom reveal. Ed Boon is usually pretty open in discussing Mortal Kombat X with fans on Twitter but I haven’t seen him make a statement regarding the leak as of yet. We’ll keep you updated with any further news so stay tuned.