KURTIS STRYKER
First Appearance: Mortal Kombat 3
Total Appearances: MK 3 & MK: Armageddon, MK 2011
Role: The Skrappy
PL 8 (131)
STRENGTH 3
STAMINA 4
AGILITY 5
FIGHTING 11
DEXTERITY 5
INTELLIGENCE 2
AWARENESS 3
PRESENCE 3
Skills:
Akrobatics 7 (+12)
Athletiks 4 (+7)
Deception 2 (+5)
Expertise (Police Officer) 10 (+12)
Expertise (Martial Arts) 4 (+6)
Insight 2 (+5)
Intimidation 4 (+7)
Investigation 4 (+7)
Klose Kombat (Unarmed) 2 (+13)
Perception 5 (+8)
Ranged Kombat (Firearms) 1 (+12)
Stealth 2 (+7)
Tekhnology 2 (+4)
Vehicles 1 (+6)
Advantages:
Accurate Attack, All-Out Attack, Equipment 3 (Police Gear), Fast Grab, Improved Kritical (Unarmed), Improved Kritical (Guns) 2, Improved Initiative, Improved Trip, Power Attack, Ranged Attack 6, Takedown
Powers:
Features 2: Uses Tons of New Moves as Finishing Attacks [2]
"Babality"
"Friendship!!" (Pedestrian Crossing- All the Playable Kombatants Run By"
"Animality- T-Rex Eats Enemy's Torso"
"Tasers Enemy To a Frying Death"
"Attaches Explosive Charge and Blows The Enemy Apart"
"Lodges a Grenade Into Their Stomach & Blows Them In Half"
"Tasers Enemy, Then Blows Off the Top of Their Head With His Gun"
Equipment:
"Grenade" Blast 4 (Extras: Area- 15ft. Burst +1/2) (Diminished Range -1) (9) -- (12 points)
- AE: "Beretta 92" Blast 5 (10)
- AE: "Baton" Strength-Damage +1 (1)
- AE: "Stun Gun" Blast 2 (Diminished Range -1) Linked to Affliktion 4 (Fort; Dazed/Stunned) (Extras: Ranged) (Flaws: Limited Degree) (Dim. Range -1) (6)
Offense:
Unarmed +13 (+3 Damage, DC 18)
Baton +11 (+4 Damage, DC 19)
Beretta 92 +11 (+5 Damage, DC 20)
Grenade +4 Area (+4 Ranged Damage, DC 19)
Stun Gun +11 (+2 Ranged Damage & +4 Ranged Affliktion, DC 17 & 14)
Initiative +9
Defenses:
Dodge +12 (DC 22), Parry +12 (DC 22), Toughness +4, Fortitude +6, Will +6
Komplications:
Motivation (Revenge)- Stryker was a protector of the public when the Outworld Invasion arrived, and millions of souls around him were reduced to nothing but Shao Kahn's sustenance. Angered, he's out for blood.
Total: Abilities: 72 / Skills: 50--25 / Advantages: 19 / Powers: 2 / Defenses: 13 (131)
-9 times out of 10, if you talk to others about the shitty characters this series added after the second game, people will ALWAYS mention Stryker.
-ahhhhh STRYKER. He's pretty much the proof-of-crappiness of the later
Mortal Kombat Kharacters in my opinion- his appearance in
Mortal Kombat 3 was frankly just terrible. A plain blue t-shirt and a backwards baseball cap took what was supposed to be an elite SWAT team officer into the kind of crap a group of teenagers would make in their basement for a home movie. Never mind that the live-action performer was pretty doughey compared to your average Action Movie Hero. It was THAT BAD, and looked ridiculously cheap for a million-dollar franchise like
Mortal Kombat.
-This made him a pretty well-hated character in the first version of the arcade cabinet, and the Kreators (particularly John Tobias, who assumed that Stryker would be SUPER-popular, much like a Capcom head figured Crimson Viper would be the most popular
Street Fighter IV character in America), who LOVED the guy for some reason, decided that it was because he wasn't TOUGH enough, and upgraded his abilities in the updates until he was "Sagat Tier" in the hierarchy. Yes, they went Full Claremont. And yeah, when you take a guy whose CONCEPT was hated, and make him THE BEST FIGHTER as a reaction? Guess how THAT went over, in the land where being on the Uber Tiers can make you an instant "Scrappy Doo"?
-So with this reaction, it was unsurprising that they didn't want to bring Stryker back- he didn't show up in the movies (he's mentioned in passing as escaping Rain in
Annihilation), and it wasn't until
Armageddon (where again, EVERYONE got in, regardless if they were popular) that we saw him again. And oddly, the most-recent
MK game has made him a bit more popular- it turns out making him NOT look like an ugly git (seriously, his actor was weird-looking) wearing some stuff he bought from the thrift store would go a long way towards making him a fan-favourite. Plus they gave him an origin story implying that he's the hero of both
Die Hard and
Speed.
-Stryker's post-2011 in-game stuff is actually INTENSE, featuring him and Kabal as riot cops dealing with an apocalyptic New York, and he even DEFEATS KINTARO in the story after Kintaro burns Kabal alive. Unfortunately, he is confronted by a disfigured Kabal, and then killed in battle against Sindel. He is resurrected as one of Quan Chi's revenants.
-Un-PC Gag Time: My buddy is a cop, and he's played the game with co-workers. We live in a city with a large Native population that's unfortunately prone to poverty, which of course is a leading factor in criminal behavior and excessive drinking (local jails actually have a separate alphabetical folder for "Cardinal", a common last name in the community- so it goes A, B, C, Cardinal, D, etc.). So he & his cop buddies sometimes get a kick out of playing Stryker the Cop, and shooting the crap out of Nightwolf the Native. Horrible, horrible stuff, but also extremely funny
.
-Stryker was beloved by the Kreators in part because it took so long to finally put him in the games. Initially he was going to be in the first MK game, but Sonya was put in his place to be a Token Girl. He was gonna be in MK II, but they turned him into Jax, the Token Black.
-Stryker is an odd thing- in game terms, he's no different from any other character. But in M&M terms, he's using basic Equipment while other guys are basically using Magical Weapons and the like, meaning he saves a ton of points by using mundane stuff, when a GUN in MORTAL KOMBAT is basically supernatural. He's PL 8 like Kabal and the other "one shot" MK 3 guys who really went nowhere in the stories, which makes him a very elite cop (he'd probably take out Renee Montoya, Harvey Bullock or Commissioner Gordon with EASE), but lesser than someone like Liu Kang or Kung Lao.