Cross-media recommendations across film, TV, games, books & music — picked by taste.
Mortal Kombat II follows martial arts actor Johnny Cage as he is recruited by the thunder god Raiden and Sonya Blade to stand alongside Earthrealm's champions in an interdimensional tournament against Shao Kahn's Outworld forces, with Edenian princess Kitana fighting at their side. The taste it signals: fighters pulled from ordinary lives into world-stakes combat, dark fantasy mythology built on tournament structure, and franchises where spectacular violence carries genuine cosmological consequence.
Mortal Kombat II is a 2026 American martial arts dark fantasy film based on the video-game series created by Ed Boon and John Tobias. It is the sequel to Mortal Kombat (2021) and is the fourth installment in the Mortal Kombat film series. Directed by Simon McQuoid and written by Jeremy Slater, it stars returning cast members Jessica McNamee, Josh Lawson, Ludi Lin, Mehcad Brooks, Lewis Tan, Max Huang, Damon Herriman, Chin Han, Tadanobu Asano, Joe Taslim, and Hiroyuki Sanada, with Karl Urban, Adeline Rudolph, Martyn Ford, and Tati Gabrielle joining the cast. The film follows Johnny Cage, a martial arts actor who is recruited by the thunder god Raiden and Sonya Blade to join his fellow Earthrealm fighters in an interdimensional tournament against the Outworld warriors and stop the tyrannical emperor Shao Kahn, with the help of Edenian princess Kitana.
From the Wikipedia article Mortal_Kombat_II_(film), available under CC BY-SA.
Series
Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm
A coalition of warriors defends Earthrealm against dimensional invaders, the same cosmology in animated form.
Series
Mortal Kombat: Conquest
A tournament victor must now train the next generation while a defeated enemy conspires to wreck their efforts.
Series
Street Fighter
An elite international force of top martial artists unites to uphold discipline and justice against shared threats.
Series
Cobra Kai
Old rivals reignite their feud through karate, blending personal redemption with the legacy of a brutal competition.
Series
Lord of Vermilion: The Crimson King
A mysterious red mist and resonance plunge Tokyo into chaos, pitting survivors against forces from another dimension.
Series
Mortal Kombat: Legacy
A prequel unpacking why each fighter enters the tenth Mortal Kombat tournament, grounding the mythology in backstory.
Game
Mortal Kombat Trilogy
Every fighter from the series assembled in one roster for one-on-one combat against the franchise's most brutal bosses.
Game
Mortal Kombat 4
With Shao Kahn defeated, a new threat escapes the Netherrealm and mortals must fight again to settle the war.
Game
Mortal Kombat 1+2+3
The original tournament corrupted by Shang Tsung, where Goro and dark sorcery first threatened the Shaolin legacy.
Game
Mortal Kombat
Single and multiplayer action with brutal environmental hazards — the franchise's lore expressed through co-op combat.
Game
Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks
A monk fights an evil mage in the one-on-one combat and gore that define the franchise's fighting-game identity.
Game
Mortal Kombat 11
Customisable fighters and a new graphics engine push the iconic franchise's brutal combat into its next evolution.
Book
Dragon ball super
Tournament fighters face a warrior mirroring a known enemy's transformations — power escalation through structured combat rounds.
Book
Beyblade, Volume 2 (Beyblade)
A spinning-top tournament where a fighter develops a new technique just in time to face a rival in the finals.
Book
ワンパンマン 12
A martial arts tournament unfolds while outside the arena, monsters push even powerful heroes to their absolute limits.
Book
Clockwork planet
An uneasy alliance forms between strangers under pressure to prevent a city's core structure from failing catastrophically.
Film
Mortal Kombat Legends: Cage Match
Johnny Cage again at the centre, this time navigating Hollywood shadows and genuine danger before his warrior life begins.
Film
Mortal Kombat III
The franchise's next chapter in the same action-fantasy lineage — plot still under wraps.
Film
Mortal Kombat
An MMA fighter hunted by Outworld's warriors trains with Earth's champions in that same high-stakes interdimensional battle.
Film
Mortal Kombat
Three warriors fight to stop an evil sorcerer from winning a tenth tournament that would doom the entire multiverse.
Film
Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle of the Realms
Shao Kahn's Outworld forces terrorise Earthrealm, forcing a final tournament where losing means total annihilation.
Film
Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion's Revenge
A warrior exiled to the Netherrealm serves a sinister master for one chance to avenge his slaughtered family.
If you want more Earthrealm vs. Outworld action, Mortal Kombat: Legacy digs into the characters' backstories, while Cobra Kai delivers the same martial-arts rivalry and redemption arc in a grounded, live-action setting.
Jump straight into the source material with Mortal Kombat 11, which features deep character customisation and the same brutal tournament fights, or go back to Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks for a co-op action-adventure spin on the same lore.
Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion's Revenge and Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle of the Realms are both animated entries that lean fully into the franchise's gore and Outworld mythology without the constraints of live-action casting.