Mortal Kombat 11: 9 Neglected Characters That Must Return
2. Smoke
Dangled just out of reach like a carrot on a stick over the course of Mortal Kombat X's campaign, every time Smoke's masked visage materialized on screen, hope turned ever more into frustration as NetherRealm declined to allow his liberation from Quan Chi's magic and a subsequent place on the brawler's roster.
Instead, Smoke explicitly remained a non-playable agent of the slap-headed necromancer, a fate not befitting a character sharing near-equal icon status with Scorpion and Sub-Zero as a Mortal Kombat poster child.
The reason for his absence subsequently became self-explanatory with the arrival of composite character Triborg, but that came at the expense of the genuine article and a diluted move pool that needed to make room for Sektor and Cyrax's signature attacks too.
Keep the three veteran combatants separated next time, please, NetherRealm. Cheers.