Mortal Kombat was almost named 'Van Damme', says co-creator

Coming from Mortal Kombat co-creator Ed Boon...

"We wanted to call it Van Damme. We just wanted to see huge letters, 'Van Damme' when you walked by. You couldn’t pass that up. Kumite was high on the list. Dragon Attack, which was a song by Queen . . . Death Blow, Final Fist or something… all these crazy, almost cliché martial art movie titles or something."

How did they get to the name Mortal Kombat? It turns out that credit goes to veteran pinball designer Steve Ritchie. He was visiting Boon's office and noticed the word Kombat on a whiteboard. When Boon said that he was trying to come up with a name for the game, Ritchie came forward with the Mortal Kombat suggestion.