Midway's reputation for putting secret characters in the Mortal Kombat series started with the origin of Reptile. Reptile was a hidden boss character who you could only fight in the first installment. In certain versions of the original arcade game, the audit screen showed a listing for 'Ermacs' just under the value for Reptile. Naturally, fans began to associate the two values together and this lead to the to assumption that Ermac was also a secret character. Rumors began to imply that Ermac could be discovered, further perpetuated by an issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly, in which a fan had written in with image proof of Ermac's apparent existence, which was never confirmed by any other source. Two different methods for making him appear became popular lore, the first was to get a double flawless victory against a human opponent on the stage known as warrior shrine, while another said that Scorpion's costume would randomly glitch and turn red whilst playing on certain console versions. Midway addressed the rumors with the scrambled messages 'Ermac who?' and 'Ermac does not exist' in Mortal Kombat 2. Later, Ed Boon disclosed that the 'Ermac' entry on the audit screen simply stands for 'error macros', a debug mode which is used to stop the game from crashing. Midway decided to play with the fans again and make the myth reality, with Ermac's appearance as a playable character in console editions of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3.
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