Mortal Kombat 1 makes good on a 30-year tradition of trolling fans by introducing a confusing, labyrinthine quest to fight pink Floyd, a new ninja

Mortal Kombat has a decades-long tradition of trolling series fans with the tease of secret characters who may or may not really exist. Mortal Kombat 1 is not giving up on that game, and a new secret hunt for a pink ninja named Floyd is quickly turning into one of the franchise's weirdest, wildest secret hunts yet.

Mortal Kombat 1 just got a fresh update alongside the introduction of its new DLC guest character, Conan the Barbarian. As IGN notes, fans quickly discovered that the update introduced a series of hints and teasers leading to a secret fight with the pink ninja, Floyd.

Modder and dataminer thethiny has been spearheading efforts to understand how to unlock this fight. It appears that there are 37 hidden challenges for doing things like getting a win with nothing but sweeps, or beating Scorpion as Scorpion with only spear attacks. There's a community spreadsheet tracking all the challenges, and each time you complete one, you'll hear a little guitar riff and see a Floyd icon appear.

But which challenges do you need to complete, and how many? That's the part that people haven't yet managed to figure out. You definitely don't need to complete all 37 challenges to make Floyd appear, but everybody seems to get a different secret list of challenges to complete with little clear indication of what you need to do. The closest thing to hint you might get is a quick cameo from Floyd, who has a chance of appearing after you've played 100 ladder matches and dropping a quick teaser about an active challenge.

Once Floyd finally does appear, you can expect a pretty serious fight against a ninja with a familiar moveset built from other existing characters. The fight takes places on a unique field stage, and if you manage to beat Floyd, you get to unlock and use that stage for yourself. Sadly, Floyd himself doesn't join your roster.

If the whole "pink Floyd" thing and the Dark Side of the Moon-style rainbow prism that accompanies his entrance didn't tip you off, this is indeed a reference to English rock band Pink Floyd. Back in 2022, series boss Ed Boon tweeted this in response to a fan asking about new ninja characters: "I honestly want to make a PINK ninja and name him FLOYD. No kidding." I guess he really was serious.

This whole thing mirrors the introduction of series mainstay Rain back in Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Rain showed up as a purple-clad cameo in the arcade version of the game, tantalizing players with the promise that there was another new ninja to unlock somehow. Of course, it was all just a gag - Purple Rain being a goofy Prince reference - but Rain did eventually become a playable character in the console versions of the game. Mortal Kombat's grand tradition of trolling fans with obscure Easter eggs goes back decades, and I'm glad to see it's not stopping in the modern era.

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