20) Tekken Tag Tournament 2 – BOB RICHARDS/SLIM BOB
2012

Bob rules. With a design that’s Ken Masters meets Sammo Hung, his confidence comes from his massive size. Despite only three game appearances to his name, Bob’s been all sorts of things. Top US martial artist, celebrity, suave ladies man, bounty hunter and superhero. At least, that’s what he is in his Tekken Tag 2 ending.

The art style here is beautiful, taking the form of stylized motion comics with a little more movement mixed in. Bob sees some kids being picked on by a gang of punks. He shows up on the scene in a yellow superhero costume, introducing his battle cry, “SPEED AND… WEIGHT!” The punks aren’t impressed and think he’s supposed to be a road sign. They tell him to be like a good road sign and go stand in traffic. Bob doesn’t take their advice.

The kids cheer him on and join in with his battle cry. Then he sees a woman falling off a ledge on a nearby building. Bob tries to figure out how to get to her and sees a man putting bungee cords into a van. Bob steals those bungees and uses them to propel himself into the air, catch the woman and cause massive shockwaves in the ground upon landing, all while yelling, “SPEED AND… WEIGHT!” There’s an awesome shot of one of the kids he rescued excitedly high fiving the bungee van driver. An entire crowd gathers to cheer him on.

The next day, Bob is disappointed when he sees the headlines.

Bob has a similar ending in the form of Slim Bob. See, Bob is like the anti-Elvis Presley. He takes pride in his girth, but in his Tekken 6 ending, the success led to him letting himself go and becoming thin and handsome, much to his horror. That version of him became playable in Tekken Tag 2 and in his ending, he wears a red version of the superhero outfit. Unfortunately, it’s many sizes too big and he has to keep the pants from falling down. He rescues an old man in a subway from the same muggers, only this time they refer to him as “Sci-Fi Santa Claus.” Slim Bob takes them out, but feels weaker compared to his true, blubbery self.

Then he sees that the same woman from the other ending is on the train tracks, screaming for help. He picks her up, throws her off the track and then lays on the track just as a train goes over him. He’s fine, but is horrified when the woman hands him his accidentally-discarded mask. She calls him her hero and kisses him with an entire cheering crowd around them, but we later see that despite everything, Bob is still depressed over his slim frame.

19) Mortal Kombat 4 – JAX
1997

God bless the terrible Mortal Kombat 4 endings. After figuring that text was the way of the dinosaurs, Midway decided that their first 3D Mortal Kombat game needed cutscene endings. While the Playstation version had full motion video, the arcade and Nintendo 64 versions had to rely on the in-game graphics to tell the stories. Stories filled with jerky animation, horrible dialogue and even worse voice acting. They’re magnificent.

Jax easily has the best, especially since it’s an extension of Jarek’s ending, which is sort of an extension of Sonya’s ending. Sonya confronts Jarek on a completely generic-looking plain of grass about how now that Shinnok is defeated, Jarek is going to be taken into custody. Jarek advances on Sonya, saying that he agreed to help them during this crisis, but he’ll never turn himself in. “THE BLACK DRAGON LIVE ON!”

Suddenly, it pans out to show that they’re on top of a cliff, accompanied by the worst dramatic music you’ve ever heard. Sonya tells Jarek that the Black Dragon died with Kano and that Jarek is the last one around. With a scream of, “UMMBSULKAIIIIEEEEEEE!” Jarek runs at her, misses and falls off the cliff. Sonya calls Jax on her walky-talky to inform him what just happened, but Jarek shows that he’s not so dead after all. He climbs back up, grabs Sonya by the ankle and throws her to her death. Then he stomps down on the walky-talky so hard that it not only breaks, but vanishes completely! There are no pieces of it anywhere when he moves his foot!

The walky-talky business was pointless anyway, because Jax turns out to be five feet away all this time. Weird how Jarek didn’t notice him what with there being no trees or anything. Jarek tries to talk his way out of it, but Jax isn’t hearing it. He grabs Jarek by the throat and holds him over the cliff with absolutely zero detail below. Jarek begs for his life and says that Jax has to uphold the law. This is brutality!

“Wrong, Jarek! This is not a brutality… this is a Fatality!”

Despite the subtitles, he’s still saying, “UMMBSULKAIIIIEEEEEEE!!”

It’s so beautifully shitty.

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